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.C8 
Copy 1 





Pass ^'/ /0¥^J 
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COPVRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



Manual Arts 
FOR Vocational Ends 

By Fred D. Crawshaw, B. S., M. E. 

Professor of Manual Arts, University of Wisconsin. 

Author of ' Problems in Furniture Making" 

and "Metal Spinning." 




THE MANUAL ARTS PRESS 

PEORIA, ILLINOIS 



V 



n*^^ 

c^^^ 



copyright 1912. 
Fred D. Crawshaw. 



©CI.A316317 



TO MY PARENTS 

WHO MADE IT POSSIBLE IN MY YOUTH 

FOR ME TO RECEIVE THE KIND OF AN 

EDUCATION FOR WHICH THIS 

LITTLE BOOK MAKES AN 

APPEAL. 



PREFACE. 

The agitation of industrial education during the past 
few years has made all teachers of the manual arts in 
elementary and grammar grades, as well as in the high 
school, consider the question of the sufficiency of their 
subject and the efficiency of their teaching. If the man- 
ual arts were first introduced into the public schools 
for the purpose of making boys and girls more efficient 
community workers and if, after twenty-five years of 
instruction in the manual arts, it is found that boys and 
girls are still unable, when they leave school, to meet 
reasonable community demands, then something should be 
done to change this condition. Certainly the public 
schools should be held responsible for an education which 
will enable the youth of our land to perform a service 
upon leaving school immediately profitable both to them- 
selves and to the community at large. 

If one is to receive a profitable return from a wage- 
earning occupation he must prepare particularly to do 
what is required of those engaged in the occupation. A 
vocational tendency, therefore, must obtain somewhere in 
the process of education. Inasmuch as the large majority 
of those at any time enrolled in the public schools must 
find a means of livelihood early in life, it is imperative 
that the public schools, even in the lower grades, offer 
an opportunity for vocational work. 



6 MANUAL ARTS FOR VOCATIONAL ENDS. 

It is because of this necessity, and because America is 
so largely industrial that industrial education has recently 
become prominent as a subject not only for discussion in 
educational circles but for action in legislative bodies. 

Believing that the manual arts should and may have a 
prominent place in that branch of vocational education 
known as industrial education, the author has urged upon 
his auditors in classroom and lecture room the need of a 
reorganization and an extension of the manual arts to 
meet the needs of the newer education. If by means of 
publication his appeal can be made to a larger number of 
people, this book will serve its purpose. 

May, 1912. F. D. Crawshaw. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 

Chapter I. — A General Discussion of the Re- 
lation BETWEEN Manual Training and 
Industrial Education 11 

Make all manual training broadly educational by 
giving to the process a social, economic and in- 
dustrial significance. Take manual training out of 
the dilettante stage. Manual training justified upon 
an historical basis. The work of educational re- 
formers in developing manual training. Democrat- 
izing conditions changed from political to industrial. 
A need for an education which will prepare for 
any walk in life. 

Chapter II. — Some Possibilities and Oppor- 
- tunities in the Organization of the 
Manual Arts 22 

The present failure to recognize manual training 
as a possible means in vocational education. The 
public schools must serve the masses. A system of 
universal education necessary. The place of manual 
training in such a system. The line which divides 
manual training and vocational education. The 
school must articulate with the community as a part 
of it. The time and place for specialization. What 
can be done with present organizations to meet the 
needs of today. The problem one which demands 
both change and additions. How to proceed. Some 
limitations. Industrial education not industrial 
training. A parallel course of study including both 
vocational and non-vocational opportunities for all. 



8 MANUAL ARTS FOR VOCATIONAL ENDS. 

Chapter III. — The Organization and Teach- 
ing OF the Manual Arts in the Elemen- 
tary Grades 29 

The lower grade manual arts may savor of in- 
dustrial processes. They should deal with edu- 
cational material in the bulk, but must emphasize 
fundamentals in various processes. Some values of 
lower grade construction work. Manual training 
vs. busy work. The most appropriate form of lower 
grade construction work. Materials used. The 
elements of technique and skill. Three illustrations 
of manual training. How the manual arts in the 
lower grades may emphasize the economic and in- 
dustrial in life and still retain the cultural values. 
The lower grade manual arts must be taught by the 
regular teachers as a means to the general end 
sought in education. The individual and the class 
project. 

Chapter IV. — The Organization and Teach- 
ing OF THE Manual Arts in the Grammar 
Grades 43 

The place to realize economic needs and begin to 
prepare for the necessity of making a living. The 
grammar grades the place for pre-vocational work. 
The beginnings of an industrial intelligence. 
Specialized vocational activities demand specialized 
school instruction. The value of vocational guid- 
ance. The limitations of the school to furnish a ' 
complete preparation for life or for making a living. 
The alternatives for the grammar grades. Present 
experiments. Size and condition of community alter 
methods of solution. Where differentiation between 
the work of boys and girls should begin. What can 
and should be done to vocationalize the manual arts 
in the grammar grades. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 9 

Chapter V. — The Organization and Teach- 
ing OF THE Manual Arts in the High 
School 60 

Two general groups of pupils in the high school. 
Methods of handling these groups somewhat differ- 
ent than those used in the earlier grades. What the 
high school must afford for every boy and girl. 
The organization of the high school to give the 
greatest possible opportunities for future develop- 
ment. The high school the place to begin industrial 
education. Review of the high school manual arts 
movement in the United States. The manual arts 
department in a general high school or the manual 
arts high school — which? The high school the 
place for skill plus technique. A classification of 
manual arts departments in the high school and the 
purpose of each. The relation between the work 
of the manual arts in the first two or three years of 
the high school period and that in the senior year. 
A discussion of the all-school and school-factory 
plans of providing for industrial education in the 
high school. Some real needs. 

Chapter VI. — The Teacher and Supervisor 

OF THE Manual Arts 88 

The teachers of the past, present and near future. 
The training manual arts teachers must have to 
make the needed adjustments. The demand for 
teachers who have the new point of view. The 
traditional manual training teacher or the artisan — 
which? The special training for each. What the 
manual arts teacher in service should do to keep 
abreast of the times. The supervisor as distinct 
from the teacher. The supervisor's training and 
duties. 



CHAPTER I. 

A General Discussion of the Relation between 
Manual Training and Industrial Education. 

Because we often estimate school work in memory 
values or in terms of knowledge rather than power, we 
judge the work of the manual arts superficially. When 
we see a boy making a model in wood we are at first 
inclined to think of his activity as physical only, because 
the skilled workman in doing what we see the boy do is 
performing a task which requires little thought. He has 
done it so many times that with him the work is almost, 
if not quite, automatic. Not so with the boy. He has 
not reached the point where he has formed a habitj but 
rather he is working through an experience which calls 
for foresight and judgment on the one hand, and muscu- 
lar control and correct vision on the other. He is pro- 
gressing in a truly educational process and developing 
power thereby. Incidentally, he is coming into possession 
of a considerable amount of knowledge. 

My purpose in making these statements at the beginning 
is to clarify the atmosphere with reference to what educa- 
tion really is. Professor W. C. Bagley of the University 
of Illinois defines education as follows: 

"Education may be tentatively defined then, as the 
process by means of which the individual acquires ex- 
periences that will function in rendering more efficient 

11 



12 MANUAL ARTS FOR VOCATIONAL ENDS. 

his future action." ^ It may be in the manual arts shop 
and the adjustment may have to do with materials as 
well as ideas. It would hardly seem necessary in this 
day and age when men are called upon to produce re- 
sults under conditions which never existed before and 
which vary almost as rapidly as the clock ticks off the 
hours or even the minutes of the day, to emphasize the 
fact that the whole man must be trained to be alert and 
skillful in adjusting himself to new conditions. It isn't 
the first hand knowledge that we need so much as it is 
the grasp of a situation so as to adjust ourselves to it. 
Teachers of the manual arts contend that in order to do 
this, one's experience must have been of such a character 
that he can appreciate the problems of the man who 
works with his hands as well as the one who earns his 
livelihood by virtue of his mental attainments alone. 
Manual training serves as a means to educate the in- 
dividual on many sides by giving him different angle 
perspectives and by familiarizing him with world materials 
which the classroom subjects alone cannot do. 

It may not be amiss to venture the statement that school 
work in the main does not effectually place the individual 
face to face with conditions as they exist in the adult 
world. Perhaps it is impossible so to reorganize the 
work of the school process that school children will realize 
their individuality as members of the community outside 
of the school. It seems possible, however, to make all 
school work relate closely to life problems and thereby 
to the real tasks of life, even if actual performance is 
impossible. It is this social and economic significance 

^ The Educational Process, by W. C. Bagley, The Macmillan 
Co., p. 22. 



GENERAL DISCUSSION. 13 

that manual training, by 'using industrial means, should 
give to the work of the school. 

In almost every state in the Union to-day, teachers and 
school administrators are seeking to motivate all school 
work and to give it a life value. In many educational 
meetings during this past year educators have plead for 
a closer connection between the life of the school and the 
life of the community. Naturally enough the manual 
arts teacher looks to the industrial activities for sugges- 
tions which will help him make shopwork and drawing 
serve to tie together the school and the community life. 
The emphasis, therefore, which is being placed upon man- 
ual training to-day is this : ( 1 ) Give the shop and 
drawing problems as much thought now as they have been 
given in the past to make them show the significance of 
the abstract school material. (2) Take account of all 
the discoveries of child study in coordinating properly 
the motor and the mental elements in the educative pro- 
cess. (3) Vitalize all school work by strongly socializing 
it. Do all these things, which manual training has sought 
to do in the past, but do one thing more to take it out of 
what some have called the dilettante stage of development 
— make it strongly industrial. That is, give every shop 
process an industrial rating to evaluate in the child's mind 
the process in the industrial shop and a similar process 
in the school shop. Make the school process as closely as 
possible a duplicate of the commercial shop process, and 
still retain the educational values, mental, moral and all 
the rest, which the manual training of the past has 
claimed. 

In one sense of the word this is not far from the 
thought which must have been in the minds of some of 



14 MANUAL ARTS FOR VOCATIONAL ENDS. 

the early educational reformers who first introduced hand 
work into the school. The Russians, for example, intro- 
duced a form of shopwork into the Imperial Technical 
School in Moscow, which was good progressive hand tool 
work, and which had as one of its ultimate ends the 
preparation of young men for the skilled tool and machine 
work in government shops. The first manual training 
school in the United States, viz., the St. Louis Manual 
Training School had for one of its objects the training 
of boys for superior shop positions. In both of these in- 
stances, and others, however, the school shopwork was 
given in the secondary school period. When later on it 
was introduced into the lower grades, the prominence of 
the commercial and industrial values was lost sight of, 
and social and particularly educational values took their 
place. Thus the issues were confused and during the last 
few years high school manual training work has become 
formal and, in many cases, has lost its possible vocational 
value. Notwithstanding this fact, however, there has 
never been a time when there could not be found a reason 
for the existence of manual training in both the element- 
ary and secondary school grades. Since the beginning of 
the agitation upon the motor element in school work there 
have been not a few of the strong educators in each 
decade who have argued in favor of the physical and the 
manual activities in the school. If we wish to justify 
manual training on the ground of its having an historical 
setting we may refer to a long list of educators who have 
in a large measure been responsible for educational 
methods and who have given their testimony in favor of 
manual work in schools. 

We learn from the historical writings of the Ancient 



GENERAL DISCUSSION. IS 

Jews that these people put great store in the fact that 
every boy should be possessed of a trade, and in their edu- 
cational system they provided for one-half day in regular 
school work as it was pursued at that time, and one-half 
day in the shop. During the last few centuries, this plan 
has been abandoned in many countries in public school 
work, but in some institutions, notably the state insti- 
tutions for the care of dependents and other state charges, 
the plan has been continued. It is interesting to note at 
this time that it is again coming into favor in public edu- 
cational systems, and while we may be as yet loath to 
adopt it generally under the guise of industrial education, 
it is becoming more and more popular. Manual training 
supervisors and directors are asking for more time, even 
though they do not request a half-day, the time given in 
the reformatory institutions, for their work each day of 
the week. In many instances it is said by men who speak 
authoritatively upon manual training subjects, that unless 
more time is devoted to the hand training there is little 
use in presenting the work at all. It is very certain that 
with not more than an hour and a half per week devoted 
to shop and drawing (a total of 60 hours or less than 
eight, 8-hour days per year) little can be done other than 
that which is referred to as dilettante or amateurish. 

The Greeks, too, in the early times presented a scheme 
of harmonious education; it possessed the elements of 
moral, mental and physical education. 

Somewhat after the plan of the Ancient Jews, Luther 
preached the doctrine of practical work in the schools, 
and Ulrich Zwingli said, that every burgher should have a 
handicraft by which he could make a living. "Were this 
the practice," he said, "we should be rid of idleness, root 



16 MANUAL ARTS FOR VOCATIONAL ENDS. 

and branch, and our bodies would be healthier and 
stronger." 

"It is not a soul; it is not a body that has to be edu- 
cated," said the great French philosopher, Michel de 
Montaigne, "it is a man." Down through the ages men 
have believed in this theory until it has become a law upon 
which all education is based, and yet how far short of 
it do we come in much that we do in our schools! Of 
all the school subjects, however, manual training, as much 
as any other one subject probably, is helping to make this 
law a reality in modern educational methods. Notwith- 
standing this fact, it may do more. It may help educate 
the whole man by properly utilizing his hands and his 
eyes as well as his mind in his general development, and 
more, also, to acquaint him with the activities of those 
who make up the great army of workers whose ranks 
such a large proportion of our American youth join long 
before they complete the common school or grammar 
grades. Mr. Bloomfield, in his most estimable little book, 
"The Vocational Guidance of Youth," says, in quoting 
the Committee on Attendance at Continuation Schools 
in England and Wales, "Unless children are thus cared 
for at this turning-point in their lives, the store of knowl- 
edge and discipline acquired at school will be quickly dis- 
sipated and they will soon become unfit either for employ- 
ment or for further education." ^ The words of this 
quotation refer to the guidance which may be given those 
who, leaving school at 14 years of age, may and usually 
do enter "blind alley" occupations. Those positions which 
may be characterized thus are destructive of life work 

^The Vocational Guidance of Youth, by Meyer Bloomfield, 
Houghton, Mifflin & Co., p. 17. 



GENERAL DISCUSSION. 17 

motives and are alluring only because of their high initial 
wages. 

The social and economic conditions surrounding the 
youth of our present metropolitan cities did not affect 
Boys and girls in the same degree when manual training 
was first employed as an educational means. When, there- 
fore, we hear it said that manual training has been a 
failure we may justly challenge the accuser. Manual 
training though started in some schools to prepare boys 
more effectively to cope with life's problems, has, in gen- 
eral, been justified upon the basis of its cultural value, 
and it was because of this value that the older educational 
reformers found a reason for introducing and defending 
it. 

It may be true now, as it was in former times, that 
this branch of educational work may be justified upon this 
traditional ground, especially so for that class of public 
school children who continue in school work bej^ond the 
state school age limit. The pressure of economic neces- 
sity, however, makes it imperative for many to leave school 
early in life, and for this class something more than the 
purely cultural value should obtain. If, therefore, we 
can in some way revert to the content if not the method 
of earlier school hand training and retain the cultural 
value as well, we shall accomplish a just result and meet 
present needs for both classes of pupils concerned. 

Comenius, the father of modern education, Locke, 
Rousseau, and others of the seventeenth and eighteenth 
centuries, gave handwork a prominent place in their plans 
for the education of the masses. Pestalozzi and Froebel 
not much more than one hundred years ago evidenced in 
their great work for education a firm belief in the develop- 



18 MANUAL ARTS FOR VOCATIONAL ENDS. 

ment of the phj'sical together with the mental to produce 
the Utopian in education, "Man only understands 
thoroughly that which he is able to produce" is a Froe- 
belian quotation which every teacher must recognize as a 
fundamental truth. How many, many times have we had 
this impressed upon us, as we have endeavored to convey 
to others the ideas which we possess. What better way 
have many of us found than to fashion with our own 
hands out of some common material, such as clay or wood, 
the object which expressed to others the information we 
wished to impart? If this is true with us in our lives, 
why is it not true in the lives of our pupils? 

History in a multitude of instances bears testimony to 
the fact that manual training is an essential educational 
means. We need not review modern history as we have 
ancient history to show the trend of thought in the direc- 
tion of the physical activities as a part of the educative 
process. We know that in Europe to-day and in our 
own country, the manual training movement is spreading 
at a tremendous pace. It has had its pitfalls to be sure. 
It is still a youthful subject as compared with much that 
has a prominent place in the schools. It, therefore, has 
been a subject of much criticism and has had to develop 
in spite of many sad mistakes. It doubtless still has such 
a development to make that in a few years we may not 
recognize as worth while any of the handwork of today. 
But we shall agree, I am sure, that today its position in 
the curriculum is one of increasing dignity and importance. 
Men of deep and broad thought are helping to push it 
forward. 

President David Felmley of the Illinois State Normal 
University, before the State Teachers' Association of IIH- 



GENERAL DISCUSSION. 19 

nois recently said: "The best values in manual training 
are in the habits, ideals, and attitudes it fosters. It inter- 
ests many pupils who are not successful in other school 
studies, holds them in school, imparts new zest for some 
of their other studies, and gives a sense of capacity, power, 
and effectiveness to many a boy who is almost ready to 
accept the teacher's estimate of his incapacity and worth- 
lessness. To strengthen the will it is necessary to develop 
the willingness, the power, and the determination to think 
connectedly. The ordinary school studies afford many 
opportunities for complex thinking, but many children 
have little interest in abstractions. They must think in 
the concrete. Manual training is interesting, it connects 
our thinking closely with our doing." * By this connection 
the achievements in life are made possible. 

Dr. W. C. Bagley, Professor of Education in the Uni- 
versity of Illinois, in recent lectures* has impressed his 
classes with the idea that the greatest thing in the world 
is not happiness, peace, contentment, or long life, but 
achievement. We may make achievement a possible ideal 
in life if, by the proper incentives, to achieve becomes the 
pupil's goal. It is possible to form the habit to achieve. 
President David Felmley, of the Illinois State Normal 
University, says, "It is, however, possible to form a habit 
of completing one's undertakings, of being deliberate and 
cautious before acting. Furthermore, if a habit has been 
formed, not by external constraint, but voluntarily, under 
the inspiration of an ideal, the same ideal may create 

Illinois State Teacher's Association Report, Dec. 28-30, 1909. 
Paper: "The Educational Value of Manual Training," by 
David Felmley, p. 101. 

* Given in Summer Session of 1909 at the University of 
Illinois. 



20 MANUAL ARTS FOR VOCATIONAL ENDS. 

habits in other fields. Thus, if the habit of neatness is 
formed through the pupil taking pride in a clean shop and 
an orderly bench because of his fidelity to an abstract ideal 
of neatness and order, the same ideal may function by 
creating similar habits in regard to his clothing, his books, 
desk, and manuscript. Now, manual training leads all 
other school work in its power to develop fidelity to ideals 
because our work remains as a visible, tangible thing just 
as we have made it." ° 

Again Dr. Felmley says, "The self-respect enjoyed by 
skilled workmen is one of the most substantial qualities of 
good citizenship. Longfellow's Village Blacksmith 'looked 
the whole world in the face.' The free cities of the mid- 
dle ages owed their democratic character and political 
capacity to the members of the gilds, and it is in the homes 
of such workmen, next possibly to our farm homes, in 
which our best citizenship is bred today." ' 

In this statement Dr. Felmley sounds the key note for 
the transition which it is possible for us to make in our 
manual arts work to make it more nearly comply with 
the needs of the time, viz.; to have a school work which 
will at every possible point touch life as it exists in society. 
The school must not only act upon and for the commu- 
nity, but must be a reflection of the community's activi- 
ties and thereby become a part of the community life. 
The manual arts, by using community materials and, to 
a degree, at least, its vocational methods, may help in 
this process. 

° Illinois State Teachers' Association Report, Dec. 28-30, 1909. 
Paper: "The Educational Value of Manual Training," by 
David Felmley, p. 102. 

'Ibid p. 103. 



GENERAL DISCUSSION. 21 

Thus it would seem that there is a growing realization 
of the needs of our American youth for an education 
which will both prepare them for either continued school 
work following the grammar grades or for service in a 
wage-earning position which has in it the elements of a 
progressive serviceable life. Men and women must soon 
be trained in sufficient numbers, and broadly enough to 
teach the manual arts, not as mere workmen, but as indi- 
viduals who see that education for the masses today means 
a practical and a broad knowledge of many things, and 
also a specific knowledge about, and a power to do, some 
particular thing. To secure teachers with such ideals is 
a difficult task. 



CHAPTER II 

Some Possibilities and Opportunities in the 
Organization of the Manual Arts. 

Some experiments which have been made in recent 
years to provide for better equipped industrial w^orkers 
have seemed to indicate that little account is being taken 
of the possibilities afiforded by manual training in the 
public schools to accomplish in part, at least, the desired 
results. Unquestionably the trade school, the special in- 
dustrial school and the continuation school are each and 
all a means to a desired end. It is a question, hovv^ever, 
w^hether our present public school organization may not 
do much that it is not now doing to aid in the vocational 
education movement. If adjustments may be made with- 
out serious loss of any inherent good qualities in the 
present organization, there would seem to be little argu- 
ment in favor of duplication by creating a new organiza- 
tion and an entirely new system of schools. 

With renewed vigor we are asking ourselves three old 
questions : 

1. What is manual training for? 

2. Whom is it for? 

3. How can it best prepare the recipients of its 

benefits, individually and collectively, to cope 
with the present industrial conditions? 

22 



POSSIBILITIES AND OPPORTUNITIES. 23 

In a public school system, whether it deals with the 
grammar grades, high school, college or university, we 
cannot provide for serving the classes only. We must in 
all our plans consider the masses. We must consider the 
90 or more per cent whom we may describe as normal 
in physical and mental possibilities. For the masses we 
must make a provision which results in a system of uni- 
versal education in which "the best results will always 
follow when as many subjects as possible and as many 
vocations as may be are taught together in the same school, 
under the same management and to the same body of 
men." ^ 

In answer to the question, then, — "What is manual 
training for?" — , I would say that its purpose is to play 
a necessary part in the development of every individual 
toward complete citizenship. Does this mean that the 
object of manual training should be technique, skill, the 
capture of the boy's interest, or the development of com- 
munity interests? It means that all of these are legiti- 
mate objects. These are only some of the possibilities 
which center in the thought that to keep a live boy in 
school and make him good for anything when he gets 
out of it, some portion of his time must relate directly 
to a business activity outside of the school. This, manual 
training must do, if it is to maintain a responsible place 
within the school system. 

Assuming now that every boy in school is a live one, 
it is easy to answer the second question, — 'Whom is 
manual training for?' — , by saying that it is for every boy 
in school. It is, therefore, a part of a plan to provide 

* Dean Eugene Davenport, The University of Illinois. In 
a bulletin entitled: "Education for Efficiency," p. 7. 



24 MANUAL ARTS FOR VOCATIONAL ENDS. 

a general education. It is a part of universal education 
or education for efficiency. We would conclude from 
this statement that, certainly in the elementary grades and 
possibly in the grammar grades, to direct manual train- 
ing in the line of any one or a few industrial activities is 
absurd. If manual training is worth while, we should 
never give up the idea that it is for every boy, and that 
it is just as important in his plan for life as any other 
subject in the curriculum. We must continue to believe, 
that, for the mass of students, none of the grades below 
the high school is the place for specialization. We must 
become resourceful enough either to give a form of man- 
ual training which involves the fundamentals in many 
industries, or else we must enrich our equipment by add- 
ing to our present shops those which will provide for the 
important industries. To such an extent a semi-speciali- 
zation may be made possible. To this extent only spe- 
cialization should be carried below the high school and 
for those only who must go into wage earning positions 
before the high school is reached. 

There was a time when a school teacher could afford 
to say, because of the limited opportunities in active life, 
that one individual was especially adapted for a profes- 
sional career, and another for some one of the industrial 
pursuits. Today, however, when we have an almost 
unlimited number of specialties, it is not within the prov- 
ince of the school-master either to outline one's future 
by positive prediction, or by such an arrangement of 
studies that there can be but one future for the individual 
who follows the arrangement. We must confess, how- 
ever, that this is just what many a school-master has 
done, if his arrangement of studies has been such that 



POSSIBILITIES AND OPPORTUNITIES. 25 

the sequence of grammar school, high school, college and 
university has been the only possible one. 

We have been altogether too much interested, if we 
were high school teachers, in keeping our school on the 
accredited list of some university. What we should be 
concerned in is a school so complete that its proper main- 
tenance may mean a continuous growth for every boy 
toward a universal education. It must be so organized 
that there are the vocational and the non-vocational 
courses paralleling each other, and that the courses in 
these two lines shall be so administered that whenever 
a boy steps from the classroom into the larger school of 
activity — the office, the accounting room, or the shop — 
he may be an efficient unit in his surroundings. My 
answer then to the question, — "How can manual training 
best prepare the students individually and collectively 
to meet the present industrial conditions?" is: by in- 
creasing the facilities of the school so that under one 
management and for all its pupils it may articulate with 
the community as a part of it. 

Long ago it was learned that every man must have 
two educations — one, the vocational, and the other, the 
non-vocational. The one to make him a bread winner, 
the other to make him a man among men. Admitting 
now, if we can, that the schools are not fulfilling their 
obligation to society in this respect, and that manual 
training teachers are shareholders with their brother 
teachers concerned in more purely academic subjects, what 
can we do to change our methods? 

Already we have from four to eight shops equipped 
for wood and metal work. We have drawing rooms to 
provide for three classes of mechanical drawing and as 



26 MANUAL ARTS FOR VOCATIONAL ENDS. 

many classes of freehand drawing. We have science 
laboratories for practically all the sciences that are taught. 
If now we should provide an equipment for some of the 
special industries of the community, such for example 
as pottery, printing, and weaving, and modify the courses 
in the shops already provided by giving the courses of 
study conducted in them a strong industrial tendency, 
we would be able to meet any reasonable demands thus 
far made for industrial education. The transformation, 
then, of the present public high school would mean a com- 
paratively small expenditure of money. The maintenance 
of such a school would be slightly greater than that of 
the large high schools at present equipped for a variety 
of work. The difference in this particular, however, 
would not be great. It really is not a question of first 
expense or maintenance expense; it is a question of pur- 
pose. We can do the thing that we set out to do if we 
are all agreed upon a particular plan. 

It is not necessary for us at this time to consider defi- 
nitely the kind of work to be done in this new school. 
Let us hope, however, that it may be such as to retain 
all of the valuable elements in our present day manual 
training work, and to embody also such fundamental prin- 
ciples of industries as to make it possible for a boy, when 
leaving school either before graduation or at the time of 
graduation, to "make good." There are many things 
of actual industrial value which manual training teachers 
might agree upon as satisfactory to teach, if viewed from 
the standpoint of our present-day ideals, both educational 
and industrial. 

It is believed that we may safely say that some of the 
results of a school, such as has been considered in this 
illustration, would be these: 



POSSIBILITIES AND OPPORTUNITIES. 27 

First, to control under a single management the whole 
of a boy's education in school. 

Second, to educate for the industries rather than to 
train for them. 

Third, to enrich the industries by sending into them 
men of judgment and balance. 

Fourth, to emphasize skill, technique, and workman- 
ship by the employment of industrial standards. 

Fifth, to prepare young people for the actual work of 
life while they are being given all of the refining and 
uplifting influences which the non-vocational studies pro- 
vide. 

Sixth, to develop a system which is not at all times 
preparing for something far ahead. At whatever point 
the boy might leave school he would be prepared to do 
what is one of the hardest things for any of us to do; 
namely, to adjust ourselves to present conditions. Such 
an adjustment is made because of our appreciation of the 
relation between the means and the ends in life; and it 
is with reference to this relation that the course of study 
in our new school must be designed. 

Regarding the limitations for industrial education, if 
the plan outlined is followed, three may be presented: — 

( 1 ) The boy's age. We cannot expect a boy of four- 
teen or fifteen to do a man's full work no matter what 
his preparation for a man's work may be. The schools 
can never turn him out at the end of a common school 
period as an A No. 1 industrial workman. 

(2) His natural rights. America is a democracy; 
and while it may be true that the boys of 100 men 50 
years from now will be doing much the same thing their 
fathers are at present doing, still we cannot prophesy 



28 MANUAL ARTS FOR VOCATIONAL ENDS. 

truly of any particular one of them. We owe every nor- 
mal individual a chance to reach one goal — that which 
the best equipped individual in the community may some 
day reach. He and not we, by the natural law of selec- 
tion and rejection, must find his place. If we have done 
our part, when he does find it, it will be comfortable 
by virtue of his broad rather than his narrow education. 

(3) His natural abilities. Believe what we may re- 
garding our being born into the world as equals, we know 
that our present and future environment limits our possi- 
bilities. No matter what form of industrial education 
is attempted, there will be those who will reach their 
limit short of our expectation. Let us not, however, 
provide such a course that they shall fall by the wayside. 
It is perfectly possible when they discontinue their school 
education and commence that which results from the 
more active and broader community life, for them to 
stand instead of fall. 

Let us hope, therefore, for industrial education, not 
merely industrial training; for the parallel course of 
study which means vocational and non-vocational oppor- 
tunities for all ; for the unified system which economizes 
time, space and money for the boy and the community 
of which he is a part ; for the universal education which 
means an industrial efficiency as well as a social efficiency, 
which gives hope to every individual for something better, 
but which for every station in life gives the satisfaction 
that can come only when we feel that we possess a reserve 
power which is the result of broadening rather than nar- 
rowing influences. 



CHAPTER III 

The Organization and Teaching of the Manual 
Arts in the Elementary Grades. 

Enough has been said thus far to suggest two things: 

(1) That the manual arts in all the grades of school 
work may and probably should keep in touch with voca- 
tional and especially with industrial activities. 

(2) That in all grades above those ordinarily called 
elementary the manual arts must have a strong vocational 
bearing, if they are to serve their full purpose. 

In any form of educational work, even in that which 
is designed for those who did not receive the advantages 
of an early school training, it is still considered good 
practice to lay a general foundation for future work by 
considering fundamental principles. In the teaching of 
manual arts we would naturally consider the elementary 
grades the place in the school process where material 
should be handled with regard to a general development 
rather than viewed as a means to some specific end. It 
is in these grades then that the manual arts should be 
taught less as a subject and more as a method or process, 
— in short, as a means to a general educational end. 
Manual training, then, is a term which can best be used 
when speaking of the manual arts as taught in the ele- 
mentary school period. 

It is assumed that the modern school methods for this 
period do not consider any of the many school subjects 

29 



30 MANUAL ARTS FOR VOCATIONAL ENDS. 

in a formal manner. Number work for example in the 
first two or three grades is no longer taught in the ab- 
stract. Indeed it is not taught as concrete number work 
even. Facts concerning numbers are learned by the first 
and second grade children by means of association. This 
example suggests that all educational material in these 
grades is used in the bulk rather than in parts. The 
little child absorbs, as it were, a certain amount of infor- 
mation concerning many things which later on in his 
progress he knows as arithmetic, language, geography, 
history or any one of the subdivisions into which educa- 
tional material is divided. Acting upon the same general 
plan in teaching construction work (a name given to the 
manual arts in the lower grades) we would use materials 
in the early grade handwork whenever they can be made 
to serve the purpose of broadening the educational horizon 
of the child better than any other available means. 

It may be well now for us to consider just a few of 
the things which construction work in the lower grades 
may be able to do for the child in the process of acquiring 
general information and gaining power to discriminate 
and assimilate in a natural way. 

First of all, perhaps, it will give him a natural outlet 
for the expenditure of his physical energy. 

Second ; it affords him a means of social occupation in 
the use of the material with which he is thoroughly 
familiar. 

Third ; it gives him what Dr. John Dewey calls, 
"Modes of social occupation with which he is thoroughly 
familiar in his everyday surroundings." ^ 

' "The Place of Manual Training in the Elementary Course 
of Study," by John Dewey, Manual Training Magazine, Vol. 
2, No. 4, July, 1901, p. 194. 



MANUAL ARTS IN ELEMENTARY GRADES. 31 

Fourth; it enables him to acquire a certain technique 
and a degree of skill in the simple operations which are 
fundamental in vocational activities. 

Fifth; it establishes standards in neatness, precision, 
judgment and the cardinal principles which obtain in all 
life's activities. 

It is one thing to theorize and quite another to put 
one's theories into practice. Just how one is to correlate 
the construction work with the other subjects in the cur- 
riculum is a difficult problem in any grade, but nowhere 
probably more difficult than in the lower grades. What 
materials to use and when and how to use them are sub- 
jects worthy of the most philosophic consideration coupled 
with extreme attention to practical conditions. The word 
practical is used here because it is believed that even in 
the elementary grades we can and should teach life at 
every possible point consistent with the best educational 
theories. 

Indeed, it is only when the little child lives in a natural 
environment where familiar objects and association of 
objects are common-place that he finds a situation in 
v/hich he may develop. The common-place things to the 
child are those which exist in the home and its immediate 
surroundings. This very fact, however, sometimes be- 
comes a barrier in the early progress which is possible in 
the schoolroom. To give relaxation to the child, the 
teacher will allow certain motor activities to be repeated 
again and again which are well understood by the child, 
and many times are those with which he is familiar 
in his home. Such motor activities are commonly called, 
"busy work." They should in no case be confused with 
motor activities which are accompanied by an active 



32 MANUAL ARTS FOR VOCATIONAL ENDS. 

mental process. These latter activities are of the class 
known as manual training. 

It is not a difficult task to plan a course in hand- 
work which may be good busy work and possibly have a 
value in training the hand and eye and developing the 
child in new habits of accuracy and neatness, but such a 
course may not be good manual training. If the theories 
thus far stated were to be summarized, one might say 
that the best course in manual training must consider not 
only the training of the hand and the eye in some isolated 
occupation, but it must be a course which touches the life 
of the ch'Ad in his work and play, in school and at home. 
It must also be a course which acts as an educational flux 
in joining one subject in the curriculum to another. It 
must tend to show the child the relationship between the 
regular school subjects and his outdoor life — his play at 
present and his possible work in the future. In short, it 
must be a course which makes him feel his importance as 
a living, working, social being. Such a course may be 
practical, and educational as well, and unless it is practical 
it will not be in the highest degree educational. 

What then is manual training according to such a 
standard? First and foremost, it is a course in hand- 
work dealing with elementary industrial processes which 
have a place in present industrial life, have had a place 
in the industrial life of the past, and probably will have 
in that of the future. Such a course, from the stand- 
point of educational theory, will be recognized as service- 
ble and practical for actual schoolroom conditions, because 
it will allow and demand a correlation with geography, 
history, language, reading, and arithmetic. It will be 
practical from the standpoint of the community, because 



MANUAL ARTS IN ELEMENTARY GRADES. 33 

it will teach the child the elements of the occupations 
followed by members of the community. 

In the second place, the best course in manual training 
always provides problems in handwork in a material 
which the pupils can handle successfully and that the 
teacher understands and enjoys. Some courses in manual 
training have been designed which require the children 
to work in materials too difficult for them, and without 
regard to the experience and ability of the teacher. The 
result in such cases may be to give the children a relaxa- 
tion from the regular book work, but it does not insure 
growth in good habits, either of thought or action. 

Thirdly, the best manual training takes account of 
skill in its inventory of educational and industrial values. 
We sometimes hear it said that a consideration of tech- 
nical processes in elementary manual training develops 
merely the physical or manual side of the child's nature 
and loses sight of his mental development. If we consider 
the mere mechanical operation in our work to the extent 
of losing sight of the child and his interests — the material 
product and not the means — certainly this statement must 
have some ground for being made. On the other hand, to 
allow the child to do a thing as he pleases, thinking he 
will readily discover a good method of work through his 
experiments, is neither good education nor good common 
sense. We demand the best books and the best teaching 
methods for arithmetic, language and geography. Why 
should we not do as much in manual training? 

To show more clearly what I mean by practical and 
educational manual training, let me give specific illus- 
trations. In some schools where a large number of pupils 
are taught, and this is the condition under which work 



34 MANUAL ARTS FOR VOCATIONAL ENDS. 

must be done in the average public school, it has been 
customary for the supervisor or teacher to plan in detail 
each exercise that the class must make in a given course. 
The material is selected by the teacher, and each pupil in 
a class is required to make a certain thing at a certain 
time. Often the thing made is of no value to the maker 
after its completion ; it is simply an exercise in the use 
of certain tools or the handling of certain materials. The 
course is designed to teach the child certain definite pro- 
cesses in handwork. In such a course the child may enter 
upon his work with considerable enthusiasm because he 
is doing something with his hands — and what child does 
not love to do things with his hands? Soon, however, 
the interest in the mere doing is gone, except for a few 
who may have a strong liking for the particular tools 
used or have exceptional ability to work in the particular 
material chosen. The result is that the class interest is 
lost because the child is not treated as a thinking, feeling 
individual, but merely as part of a system. 

Now this sort of manual training may teach good 
methods of handling tools, but it does not stimulate the 
best thought; it may make the pupil accurate in certain 
work, but it does not make him accurate in judgment; 
it does not strengthen his reasoning powers. Such manual 
training may make the pupil draw neat lines, handle a 
pencil and ruler well or control the needle in making a 
particular stitch, but does it tend to make the child 
thoughtful and interested in drawing or sewing? Prob- 
ably not. Why? Because the real child and his desires 
and ambitions have not been considered. 

A second illustration : The supervisor or teacher does 
not plan his course before the school year opens; he puts 



MANUAL ARTS IN ELEMENTARY GRADES. 35 

his own judgment in the background and waits for the 
child's demands. This is the question he asks on the 
first day of school, "Well, children, what shall we make 
this year?" The answer: "A play house of wood." 
Thus the work for the year is chosen, and down to the 
shop goes the class from the third and fourth grades. 
Without any instruction concerning the use of tools or 
the value of wood, without any knowledge of the build- 
ing of a house, saws, planes, hammers and nails are used 
to mutilate and destroy valuable material. And what is 
the result? One of two things: Either the teacher 
finally makes the play house or the pupils make something 
they are dissatisfied with or even ashamed of. 

This sort of manual training may develop a certain 
kind of individuality, a sort of self reliance, but it does 
not train in good habits mentally, morally or physically. 
We shall agree, I am sure, that neither of these illustra- 
tions suggests the kind of manual training we want our 
children to have, yet in both we find good points. Let 
us take the good from each and use it in a third illustra- 
tion. 

The supervisor selects a material to be used in a 
certain grade because it is used in the community in 
which the school is placed, and because experience has 
shown that it may be used successfully by children of 
the age found in that grade. 

He plans his course so far as the tool exercises or 
methods of manipulation are concerned, but he does not 
decide upon the particular thing to be made by each 
pupil. He leaves that to the good judgment of the class 
teacher and desires of the individual pupils. The classes 
meet and begin work with the understanding that certain 



36 MANUAL ARTS FOR VOCATIONAL ENDS. 

things must be learned before they can do well what they 
wish to do, and with the further understanding that when 
the proper time comes they will be permitted to work out 
their individual plans. Each pupil learns to handle both 
material and tools in exercises which may or may not 
have a value in themselves when completed. While this 
is being done, the language, geography, history and arith- 
metic are incidentally used to show the child what can 
be done in his manual work. When this elementary work 
is completed each child uses his new knowledge arid new 
power in developing his own individual project under 
the supervision of his teacher. Now what is the result 
of this kind of manual training? Certainly this: Good 
habits of thought and action are formed. Proper methods 
of working with tools are learned. An interest in the 
thing being done is kept, and results which are worthy of 
the effort put forth are secured. Self-reliance and indi- 
viduality are developed. The pupil becomes both a 
rational thinker and a careful doer. By such results 
practical and educational manual training may be tested. 

Emphasizing in another way the thought which is ex- 
pressed in the above paragraphs, it may not be out of 
place to say a word concerning the process of recapitula- 
tion which manual training has sought to follow. The 
theory has sometimes been this: To educate the child 
properly we must provide for him the experiences of 
primitive man. 

"That the child should recapitulate the exact external 
conditions, performances, and blunders of primitive man 
is a ludicrous proposition. That he should assume a 
similar attitude is almost inevitable. The former con- 
ception leads to the notion that, since the race had to 



MANUAL ARTS IN ELEMENTARY GRADES. 37 

advance out of the errors of an animistic interpretation 
of nature to the truth as made known in science, the 
child must be kept in the mist of a sentimental and myth- 
enwrapped nature study before he can deal in any direct 
and truthful way with things and forces about him. The 
second conception means that it is the business of edu- 
cation to get hold of the essential underlying attitude 
which the child has in common with primitive man, in 
order to give it such play and expression as to avoid the 
errors and wanderings of his forefathers, and to come to 
the ends and realities toward which, after all, primitive 
man was struggling." ^ 

To work from the concrete to the abstract; to follow 
the sensible interpretation of the recapitulation theory; 
and to vitalize the work of text-book study are prime 
motives of manual training, which are responsible for 
many courses of study. Because manual training puts 
the theory of the book into material in three dimension 
form, it connects the theory of the book with the facts in 
live problems and vitalizes the whole process of thinking 
and doing. In this way the child gets definite and 
tangible results which mean much to him as a measure 
of his success. There is a certain relaxation, too, in 
changing from the mental activity of the classroom to 
that of the shop and drawing room, where the mind is 
allowed to work to the accompaniment of the hand and 
ej^e. "To give play, to give expression to his motor in- 
stincts, and to do this in such a way that the child shall 
be brought to know the larger aims and processes of 

^The Place of Manual Training in the Elementary Course 
of Study, by John Dewey, Manual Training Magazine, Vol. 
2, No. 4, July, 1901, pp. 195 and 196. 



38 MANUAL ARTS FOR VOCATIONAL ENDS. 

living, is the problem." ^ In the construction work there 
is a certain review of the mental impressions obtained in 
the other classroom work. Such a carrying-over process 
tends to develop attention, discrimination, organization 
and logical thinking. 

The proposition herein set forth then is this: For the 
lower grades, let us use the most easily handled materials 
which have an industrial significance, such as clay, card, 
yarn, textiles and paper, to make use of the play instincts 
of the child through motor activity which forms an ac- 
quaintance with actual social and economic problems. In 
their use we shall consider two practical elements in the 
school organization, viz.. 

First: — Whether or not a supervisor is employed, the 
classroom teacher in the lower grades must be the in- 
dividual who will teach the construction work. She is 
the one who knows the actual living conditions of the 
classroom : what stories are being told ; what facts in 
geography and history are being developed ; when the 
children need relaxation the most, and numerous other 
incidental but most vital elements in the successful teach- 
ing of little children. 

Second: — The plan of the grade teachers or special 
teachers, as the case may be, must be understood in order 
that the construction work may work hand in hand with 
all other forms of school w^ork in developing the problems 
which have been set as grade problems in accordance with 
the general course of study. 

As a rule the construction work in the lower grades 

* The Place of Manual Training in the Elementary Course 
of Study, by John Dewey, Manual Training Magazine, Vol. 
2, No. 4, July, 1901, p. 198. 



MANUAL ARTS IN ELEMENTARY GRADES. 39 

will be divided into two classes, viz., the group or class 
project and the individual project. The group or class 
project is one in which all members of a class participate. 
It may be the making of a play house, or building on a 
sand-table the home of some one about whom the class 
has studied, as for example, the home of Robinson Crusoe ; 
or it may be the working out in miniature form some 
historical scene or geographical setting as told by means 
of story in the regular language work. In such a project 
each individual has. a part in the assembling of details 
which make up the whole. 

These parts which are assembled will give an oppor- 
tunity for every individual to make some particular thing 
such as a box, a house, a sled, etc. Or the individual 
project may be one which is called for because of the 
community or individual activities of the people about 
whom the group or class project serves to form an im- 
pression to be retained by the child. 

Thus a hammock or a rug may be the individual pro- 
ject in the making of which the child becomes acquainted 
with certain industrial methods as used in some vocation 
and by means of which he acquires technique and some 
skill. Incidentally also there is developed by means of 
the individual project at least some appreciation of ac- 
curacy, neatness, order, etc. 

Perhaps no better consideration of the place of con- 
structive work in the lower grades can be shown than that 
which Dr. John Dewey gives in the following quotation: 

"As a matter of convenience, the studies of the elemen- 
tary curriculum may be placed under three heads; this 
arrangement is also, I think, of some philosophic value. 
We have, first, the studies which are not so much studies 



40 MANUAL ARTS FOR VOCATIONAL ENDS. 

as active pursuits or occupations — modes of activity which 
appeal to the child for their own sake, and yet lend them- 
selves to educative ends. Secondly, there is the subject- 
matter which gives us the background of social life. I 
include here both geography and history — history as the 
record of what has made present forms of associated life 
what they are; geography as the statement of the physical 
conditions and theater of man's social activities. At more 
advanced stages of education it may be desirable to special- 
ize these subjects in such a way that they lose this direct 
relationship to social life. But in elementary education, 
of which I am speaking, I conceive that they are valuable 
just in the degree in which they are treated as furnishing 
social background. Thirdly, we have the studies which 
give the pupil command of the forms and methods of in- 
tellectual communication and inquiry. Such studies as 
reading, grammar and more technical modes of arithmetic 
are the instrumentalities which the race has worked out 
as best adapted to further its distinctively intellectual in- 
terests. The child's need of command of these, so that, 
using them freely for himself, he can appropriate the in- 
tellectual products of civilization, is so obvious that they 
constitute the bulk of the traditional curriculum, 

"Looking along the line of these three groups, we see 
a movement away from direct personal and social interest 
to its indirect and remote forms. The first group presents 
to the child the same sort of activities that occupy him 
directly in his daily life; and re-presents to him modes of 
social occupation with which he is thoroughly familiar 
in his everyday surroundings. The second group is still 
social, but gives us the background rather than the direct 
reality of associated life. The third is social, but rather 



MANUAL ARTS IN ELEMENTARY GRADES. 41 

in its ultimate motives and effects — in maintaining the 
intellectual continuity of civilization — than in itself or 
in any of its more immediate suggestions and associations. 
Manual training, constructive work (or whatever name 
we may care to employ), clearly belongs in the first 
group and makes up a very large part of it." * 

Another quotation, taken from the writings of Dr. C. 
Hanford Henderson, will serve both to explain the mean- 
ing of handwork in the lower grades and to suggest, at 
least, the difference between it and that which will be 
considered in a later chapter for the higher grades. 

"The task proposed for itself by sloyd (a form of 
manual training) is exceedingly subtle, — to engage the 
interest and spontaneity and affection of a child, to culti- 
vate the sense of beauty and the finer sense of touch, to 
increase the general bodily health and poise, and finally, 
by the directed and purposeful overcoming of the resist- 
ance of the material, to give power of brain and skill of 
hand. It is a long program, but sloyd accomplishes it 
successfully just in proportion to its fidelity to the 
practical principle of cause and effect. In the manual 
training first introduced into this country, both motive 
and method were different. The motive was technical, — 
the cultivation of a dexterity which might afterward be 
applied in industrial operations. The term 'educational' 
is often given to this earlier technical work, and was 
sincerely given by the people who introduced it; but they 
meant something quite different from what we mean 
when we use the term. As opposed to the making of 

* The Place of Manual Training in the Elementary Course 
of Study, by John Dewey, Manual Training Magazine, Vol. 
2, No. 4, July, 1901, pp. 193 and 194. 



42 MANUAL ARTS FOR VOCATIONAL ENDS. 

something that would have a direct market value, the 
work was industrially educative rather than industrially 
productive; and the earlier teachers of manual training 
devised abstract joints and exercises by way of models, 
in order to emphasize this difference. They feared that 
the schools might some time become factories, and start 
out on the dangerous road of self-support. But the real 
difference is more profound than this. The earlier man- 
ual training was undertaken in order to give a skill of 
hand to be used in industry. It was a training of the 
hand. The later or educational manual training is under- 
taken in order to give a skill of organism to be used in 
life. It is a training through the hand. The one motive 
is technical. The other is human." ° 

While it is true that the emphasis upon the manual 
arts is at the present time in the direction of the industrial 
it is quite as true that the older emphasis, viz., that of 
its educational and cultural value should continue to be 
prominent. There must be a time when the general is 
considered rather than the special — when a substructure 
must be laid for future building. Such a time in the 
teaching of the manual arts is found in the first three or 
four years of the child's school life. Here is the place 
then for breadth rather than narrowness, for some depth of 
understanding, likewise, rather than a shallow or super- 
ficial view. 

^ "Cause and Effect," by C. Hanford Henderson. Quotation 
found in a bulletin printed for distribution at the Louisiana 
Purchase Exposition, St. Louis, Mo., 1904, p. 6. 



CHAPTER IV. 

The Organization and Teaching of the Manual 
Arts in the Grammar Grades. 

In a later chapter this statement will be found : "If 
there is any particular place in the school process where 
pupils should be able to discover themselves, it is in the 
high school." 

If this statement is true the following one is equally 
well founded. The place where pupils should begin to 
realize the necessities of life and to prepare themselves in 
a practical way for the requirements of some future ac- 
tivity is in the grammar grades. 

We are becoming more and more convinced because of 
the industrial temper of our people, and because of the 
economic necessities which force children out of school 
as soon as the state will permit them to go, that the 
vocational emphasis in school work must begin early 
enough to prepare those who are thus affected for such 
a contingency. Much as we may wish to hold children 
in school until they are physically, mentally, and morally 
capable of battling with life's problems, we must recog- 
nize the overwhelming evidence, furnished by the number 
of children who leave school before they reach high school, 
that we cannot do this for all. The ever increasing large 
number who drop out of school during the period between 
14 and 16 years of age seems to establish the fact that 

43 



44 MANUAL ARTS FOR VOCATIONAL ENDS. 

if the school is to help them in any way directly to per- 
form the constructive duties of life, it must, in the gram- 
mar grades, do a pre- vocational vi^ork and, if possible, 
create an industrial intelligence. Paradoxical as it may 
seem, doing this — the thing which would seem to invite 
boys and girls to leave school early in life — may be the 
best means of retaining them longer in school. For, the 
fact that they may see in their school work an opportunity 
to do effectively a particular community service, may 
persuade both them and their parents to make the neces- 
sary sacrifice to enable them to remain in school long 
enough to prepare fully for their chosen work. If this 
should prove to be the case, it is not improbable that a 
still longer school attendance will be the result. The 
life-giving qualities of even a small achievement will 
create a desire for greater achievement. Once the desire 
to succeed is created, there is scarcely any limit to the 
expenditure of one's effort to reach the goal of full ac- 
complishment. 

As has been suggested in a previous chapter, the work 
of the first period, viz., the first three or four years of 
school life — commonly called the primary grades — should 
be based upon the fact that the child's powers of ap- 
propriation are far more developed than are his powers 
of expression. The sphere of thought and action of the 
six-year old is limited to the home. With his introduction 
into the schoolroom, this sphere is enlarged to take in 
some of the conditions of other homes than his own. Not 
only other homes, but conditions, economic, social, and 
industrial, which surround all homes, both those similar 
to his own and others, should gradually be known to him ; 



MANUAL ARTS IN GRAMMAR GRADES. 45 

and the part he is likely to play under some of these 
conditions should be realized. 

The work of helping a pupil to realize this individual 
responsibility is that part of the teacher's work for which 
he is not specifically paid, but for which he is none the 
less responsible because of this fact. It is the part which 
will go far toward solving many of the perplexing prob- 
lems surrounding the schoolroom, and particularly those 
which may be classed under the head of vocational 
guidance about which Mr. Meyer Bloomfield has so 
effectively written in his little book, "The Vocational 
Guidance of Youth." Many of the things which may be 
called traditional in the manual arts work should be done 
during this second period — the grammar grade period — 
in one's school life. We must not conclude because our 
attention has been drawn so forcibly to the need for 
vocational education in this period that it is only this 
form of education that is needed. Neither should we 
conclude that all the manual arts in grades 5 to 8 in- 
clusive should be given a decided vocational turn for all 
pupils. We shall continue to have in the school, even 
though they are in the minority, those who are destined 
to continue in the school system through the high school 
and into or through the university. As Dr. Miinsterberg, 
of Harvard has told us, it is from this class that we may 
expect to secure the future men of remarkable ability in 
the fields of science and letters. For them then, much 
attention should be given to their prospective work as 
students along the professional lines. The manual arts 
work for such should continue to be founded primarily 
upon the manual training process leading toward cultural 
ends. Either the formal manual training of the past must 



46 MANUAL ARTS FOR VOCATIONAL ENDS. 

suffice for them, or else the newer vocational manual arts 
must contain elements which will make it developmental 
for one class as well as another. It is believed that this 
form of manual arts work may be so organized that it 
will be educational in the sense that it will, as Professor 
William James says: 

"Engender a habit of observation, a knowledge of the 
difference between accuracy and vagueness, and an insight 
into nature's complexity, and into the inadequacy of all 
abstract verbal accounts of real phenomena, which, once 
wrought into the mind, remain there as lifelong posses- 
sions." ^ He continues in speaking of the manual arts, 
"They confer precision, because, if 3'ou are doing a thing, 
you do it definitely right or definitely wrong. They give 
honesty; for, when you express yourself by making things, 
and not by using words, it becomes impossible to dissimu- 
late your vagueness or ignorance by ambiguity. They 
beget a habit of self-reliance. They keep the interest and 
attention always cheerfully engaged, and reduce the 
teacher's disciplinary functions to a minimum." 

If these good qualities may be possessed by the voca- 
tional manual arts they may well replace the former type 
which now so often are classed as dilettante. Then, too, 
the administration of the manual arts work in the gram- 
mar grades will be simple. For both the children who 
will continue in school work and those who will soon 
leave school may profit by such manual arts. The former 

^ Talks to Teachers (Atlantic Monthly, March, 1899) by 
Wm. James. Found in a bulletin printed for distribution at the 
Louisiana Purchase Exposition, St. Louis, Mo., 1904, Entitled 
"Sloyd. Theory and Practice Illustrated," by Gustaf Larsson, 
p. 7. 



MANUAL ARTS IN GRAMMAR GRADES. 47 

will receive the benefit which comes from the more versa- 
tile use of all of one's faculties, as will also the latter 
class to be sure, but these will also secure the special 
training which will prepare them for a particular voca- 
tion. The expression 'prepare them' is used because, as 
Dr. L. D. Harvey of Stout Institute has said, 

"The schools do not give complete preparation for the 
work of life. Neither can they give complete preparation 
for the making of a living; but they should give that 
which may be regarded as a part of the necessary prepa- 
ration for earning a living, which can be given through 
systematic instruction in the schools better than elsewhere. 
Although this preparation may be inadequate, it should be 
a beginning, at least, of the complete preparation desired. 

"The importance of this idea will be seen when we 
realize the fact that more than 90 per cent of the pupils 
who complete the elementary course of instruction in our 
public school system earn such living as they have, through 
some form of manual labor; and that they go out from 
the public schools to enter upon that manual labor with 
no specific preparation whatever for it, and with only that 
general preparation which the limited range of work in 
the homes and the study of books in the schools have 
provided." ^ 

There are two alternatives; first, provide two kinds of 
manual arts work for the pupils in the grammar grades, 
and second, provide one — the vocational form — and ad- 
minister it so that it may be equally beneficial to all, but 
in different ways, if necessary. The latter is the more 
acceptable both from an economic point of view and an 

^ Bulletin of the Stout Training Schools, Vol. 3, No. 2, June, 
1908, p. 4. 

4 



48 MANUAL ARTS FOR VOCATIONAL ENDS. 

educational point of view as well. Educationally it does 
not seem advisable to begin segregation of a radical type 
as early as the lower grammar grades. However, until 
such time as the vocational manual arts are taught to 
serve satisfactorily both classes, there should be a segrega- 
tion because the two classes exist, and they should each 
be served as far as possible by the public school. 

To suggest now the possible means of providing 
specifically for the class of children who, in all probability, 
will not enter high school, and who when they leave 
school, if cared for in school as they have been in the 
past, will enter the non-productive or so-called blind-alley 
occupations, the following examples are given : 

( 1 ) In the large city where there may be in any one 
section a sufficient number whose future occupation can 
be determined with some considerable degree of certainty 
— such determination being made by conferences between 
parent, teacher and child — there may be established a 
vocational school. In Indianapolis, for example, there are 
several schools in which the manual arts work is typical 
of some particular community activity which furnishes a 
livelihood for the adult population. Such occupations in 
these schools are tinsmithing, sign-painting, shoe repairing 
and clothes cleaning and pressing. Together with this 
manual work there is a line of regular school work carried 
on, but always conducted in such a manner that if at 
any time a pupil chooses to continue in school even on 
into the high school, he may do so with little or no loss 
of time. Mr. Mirick, assistant superintendent of schools 
in Indianapolis, described the working of these special 
vocational grammar schools in a paper read before the 
Vocational Education Round Table at the meeting of the 



MANUAL ARTS IN GRAMMAR GRADES. 49 

Western Drawing and Manual Training Association held 
in Springfield, Illinois, May 5-10, 1911. In the proceed- 
ings of this meeting his paper is abstracted. 

It would not be possible always, especially in the city 
of moderate size, to establish special schools, but in such 
communities there could be operated within a regular 
school a department which would provide for the voca- 
tional manual arts work. In the regular academic work, 
also, there could be a division or a class whose work 
would be of the applied kind particularly designed to fit 
individuals for an early use of their book work in their 
occupation. In a sense such a division, or class would be 
conducted somewhat the same as the "ungraded" classes 
are in many cities at the present time. If a special in- 
structor could not be provided for such a group, at least 
some regular instructor could be found whose sympathies 
and understandings of the needs of the group would 
enable him soon to carry on the work of the group in a 
satisfactory manner. The necessary modification of 
regular teaching methods and the change of subject matter 
would be made in all subjects which the group pursued. 
Of course under this plan as in the first one mentioned, 
the academic work should be done to permit an individual 
to proceed into high school work as though he had 
followed the course of more complete preparation for 
such advancement. 

In the small town it would not be possible always to 
secure a sufficient number to form a vocational depart- 
ment, but always with the proper incentive some special 
attention could be given to those whose demands meant 
a special rather than a general training. A good example 
of what may be done under these circumstances is given 



so MANUAL ARTS FOR VOCATIONAL ENDS. 

in the work which is being carried on in Neenah, Wis- 
consin, under the supervision of Mr. Newton VanDalsen 
of the manual arts department, and Superintendent E. 
M. Beman. Here boys are permitted upon a competition 
basis in their regular school work to spend a half-day or 
more in the manual arts work, as a reward for satisfac- 
torily completing the week's work in the regular school- 
room. Thus it is possible for most if not all boys of 
normal ability to undertake a work along any one of 
several lines which approaches closely to actual industrial 
or trade conditions. 

It is in the smaller towns where one finds the least 
effort to do manual arts work of a graded and progressive 
kind. Here there are so many subjects to teach, and the 
teaching force is so limited that manual training is either 
neglected or found lacking in the curriculum of studies. 
Besides this, the boards of education are limited in means, 
and often are still unwilling to undertake the newer lines 
of educational work. Teachers, too, object to spending 
their time in teaching the subject for the salaries offered, 
or refuse to spend a portion of their time in teaching 
manual arts and the rest in teaching some other subject 
in the curriculum. 

Manual arts in the rural schools is a subject of great 
importance. Comparatively little attention has been 
given the subject by those who may best determine from 
a theoretical point of view the character of the work. 
Progress is being made, however, and there is promise of 
some considerable development in this field soon. 

One method in organization which has been success- 
fully tried in the country school and a somewhat similar 
plan which is being operated in Wisconsin in towns 



MANUAL ARTS IN GRAMMAR GRADES. 51 

located in an agricultural district is worthy of mention 
here. Mr. C. S. Van Deusen of Bradlej^ Polytechnic 
Institute, Peoria, Illinois, should be given credit for the 
conception of the plan. In brief it is this: Two or 
more communities combine to employ an itinerant in- 
structor who gives a certain amount of time each week 
in personal instruction in each of the school districts in 
a circuit. While conducting a class he gives the neces- 
sary demonstrations and explains instruction sheets and 
blue-prints which he leaves with his class to enable in- 
dividuals to continue work in his absence and until his 
next visit. 

By this means the small town may secure the services 
of a high class instructor who could not be employed by 
any one community alone, for the reason that it could 
not afford to pay his salary. By some supervision on the 
part of a local teacher, as much work and probably as 
good work can be done as would be accomplished if the 
instructor met his class every day. There is, therefore, 
offered the small community, both from the standpoint of 
quantity and quality of work, a satisfactory plan of con- 
ducting manual arts classes. It should be true also, with 
the kind of an instructor who may be secured for this 
work, that the proper vocational emphasis can be given 
to the course of study. In this connection it may be well 
to emphasize the importance of manual arts to the rural 
community, and the importance, also, of manual arts 
teachers emphasizing the agricultural needs in such com- 
munities by having the projects in the classwork those 
which can be used in a rural community. 

Speaking generally, now, regarding the possible ac- 
complishments in the manual arts work of the grammar 



52 MANUAL ARTS FOR VOCATIONAL ENDS. 

grades, it may be said that at the end of the fourth grade 
the child should have a fairly good knowledge of how 
distinct types of people have lived and are now living, 
and should be familiar with the hand process of pro- 
ducing many things which these people use in their daily 
lives. This means that weaving, modeling, folding, scor- 
ing, cutting and pasting have all been done by him, not 
as an end in themselves but as a means to an end ; viz., 
the acquisition of both knowledge and skill which later 
on will serve as an economic and social asset. 

During the second period, that of the upper four 
grades, the child's work should be of such a character 
that he will naturally analyze his experiences of the first 
four grades. This he will do with the aid of the history 
and geography of this period, and as a result of this work 
which calls for analysis, he will grow into social efficiency. 
This means that his manual training work should gradu- 
ally become more technical. The work of the first four 
years is given a community setting; that of the upper 
grades is given the individual setting or that of a unit 
in the community. We should remember that in these 
grades and before the high school period is reached, the 
great bulk of our American youth drop out of school. 
Here is the place where manual training teachers above 
all others have an opportunity to present school work as 
real work. Such a presentation must be made in order 
that the boy's education may be continued in school. Or 
if not in school, in some vocation for which he has had 
some real preparation in school. You may say that the 
age of the child in these grades prohibits industrial 
methods. Perhaps so, but it does not prohibit industrial 
tendencies. When the industrial education agitation 



MANUAL ARTS IN GRAMMAR GRADES. 53 

finally settles into definite molds, it will have introduced 
into the upper grades of our grammar schools a phase of 
industrial manual training which will save a great part 
of the present waste product — the boys who leave school 
because they see in it nothing which points the way to 
future life work. 

Possibly enough has been said concerning the im- 
portance of providing adequately for children — the 80 or 
90 per cent of the elementary school population — to pre- 
pare them for a vocational work when they leave school 
at the age of 14. However, there is a feeling abroad 
that hardly too much emphasis can be placed upon this 
advisable provision. In reports of educational commis- 
sions in Wisconsin, Illinois, Massachusetts and in Canada, 
which we may study, and in such books as those on voca- 
tional and industrial education by such prominent writers 
as Professors Cubberley, Sneddon, Gillette, and Hanus, 
Mr. Arthur Dean and Dean Eugene Davenport of Illi- 
nois, much attention is paid to the subject of vocational 
education. ^ The work which should be done in the 
public school system for the boys and girls of the sixth, 
seventh and eighth grades is of unusual importance from 
an economic point of view, looking toward the stability 
of our national affairs. It is needless to say that the 
affairs of the community and those of the individual in 
his private life are of no less importance. Mr, Cubberley 
in his monograph, "Changing Conceptions of Education," 
^ "The Changing Conceptions of Education," Ellwood P. 
Cubberley. "The Problem of Vocational Education," David 
Snedden." "Vocational Education," John M. Gillette. "Begin- 
nings of Industrial Education," Paul H. Hanus. "The Worker 
and The State," Arthur D. Dean. "Education for Efficiency," 
Eugene Davenport. 



54 MANUAL ARTS FOR VOCATIONAL ENDS. 

gives us this significant summary of present conditions 
concerning the work of education: "The practical man 
would make the school over ; the conservative school- 
master clings tenaciously to the past. Criticism and 
skepticism alike prevail. At last the tension becomes so 
great that something has to give way, and progress, often 
rapid progress, ensues. A new viewpoint is attained, a 
new inspiration directs our work, new means and methods 
are introduced, and often a new philosophy actuates the 
work of the school." 

While it is true that books such as those which have 
just been mentioned give us much food for thought, there 
is an element about the individual book which is un- 
satisfactory. We need either to read a number of books 
on a single subject or else to otherwise get the views of 
many people occupying different positions in life, and 
consequently viewing a subject from several angles. 
Besides getting the views of many upon the general sub- 
ject of vocational education, we need also to have a view- 
point which will duly recognize manual training as an 
educational process, and wmII also account for modifica- 
tions in present manual arts instruction intended to 
recognize legitimately the industrial processes. 

A proper consideration of the relation between manual 
training and industrial education will show the necessity 
of a differentiation in the use of materials for the two 
sexes about the fifth or sixth grade, and in the sixth grade 
we may assume that boys are capable of beginning the 
use of woodworking tools. One should guard against 
the dissipation of energy in the grammar grades too often 
caused by introducing too many media of expression. We 
must remember that our work is tending toward definite 



MANUAL ARTS IN GRAMMAR GRADES. 55 

and fixed useful hand processes; and the old motto, — 
"A thing worth doing at all is worth doing well" — ap- 
plies to boys and girls from eleven or twelve to fifteen 
or sixteen years of age. 

In the upper two grades of the grammar school, sew- 
ing, cooking and applied art work for the girls; bench 
woodwork and art metal work, together with mechanical 
drawing, for the boys, seem nearly to complete the 
manual training teacher's field of possibilities. There is 
so much in the state courses of study already either 
adopted or definitely outlined, that it may be difficult to 
add to what these outlines suggest. But constantly and 
with repeated emphasis one should be reminded that we 
are liable to suffer from mental inertia if we are not con- 
tinually searching for some means of interesting and 
holding the boys and girls in these grades, who are not 
attracted by the present forms of work. The public 
school is for the public and not for a small part of the 
public. Something needs to be done, and therefore the 
following proposition is made that it may be given con- 
sideration : 

For those boys and girls in the sixth, seventh and eighth 
grades who, because of circumstances resulting from any 
conditions^financial, physical, mental or moral, due 
either to heredity or environment — who cannot or prob- 
ably will not continue long in school, and who therefore 
must go to work, something must be done. This some- 
thing is to teach them the elements of business or trades. 
The chances are that this class of children will labor in 
their home community; therefore, the activity of the 
community should be their activity. This community 
activity must be brought into the school or else those 



56 MANUAL ARTS FOR VOCATIONAL ENDS. 

governing this activity must cooperate with the school by 
permitting children for part of the time to work in the 
community shops, factories or business houses. This idea 
is already being worked out in many places. Who can say 
that it cannot be carried lower down in the school process ? 
Would it not be better to hold boys to practical arith- 
metic, language, geography and history work for a half- 
day and know that they were spending the other half in 
work which they will in all probability follow for the 
remainder of their lives, than to lose them from the 
school influence entirely and know that they were be- 
coming lifelong automatons in a factory system? 

I quote here, Pres. L. D. Harvey of Stout Institute: 
"I venture the assertion that the three steps which 
characterize the first stage in the mastery of a trade, must 
also characterize every phase of work in a manual train- 
ing course which requires an intelligent use of tools and 
material in constructive processes, in accordance with 
sound educational principles. Therefore it follows that 
the first stage in the mastery of trade processes, in its 
rudimentary form at least, is found in all manual train- 
ing courses based on sound educational principles, and 
that with proper equipment and competent teaching force, 
the manual training may be so extended as to complete 
the work of this stage for a considerable number of trades. 
The second stage may be completed in the trade school, 
in the shop, or in both. 

"Manual training in its earlier stages must of necessity 
be carried on without any direct reference or relation to 
the development of skill in any particular vocation. The 
training which it gives in close observation of an object, 
to be produced from any given material ; the results of 



MANUAL ARTS IN GRAMMAR GRADES. 57 

effort in the construction of that object; the determination 
of wherein the effort has failed ; the training of the hand 
to execute the mental judgments; furnish a preliminary 
preparation of high value as a basis for intelligent work- 
manship which employs the hands later on. 

"In the later development of manual training, it may 
be so organized as to bear a very definite relation to 
certain processes largely employed in the industrial world, 
and at the same time secure the kind of mental training 
needed for the proper development of the individual. 

"In order to secure the facilities for industrial educa- 
tion which existing conditions seem to demand, the work 
in the elementary and secondary schools must be modified 
through an extension of the manual work now being 
carried on in a large number of schools, and yet in the 
aggregate, which reaches in any effective way, compara- 
tively few. If, through these schools there is to be a 
direct contribution to the field of industrial education, 
the work in manual training must be organized with that 
end in view; not with the distinct purpose of teaching 
trades or of giving a limited line of training in a single 
process to the point where a high degree of skill is de- 
veloped. This is not necessary indeed, in order to make 
the elementary schools a very important factor in in- 
dustrial education. 

"The practical problem for any community in organiz- 
ing work in manual training in public schools, so that it 
may bear the most direct and immediate relation to the 
industrial efficiency of the boys on leaving school, is to 
consider; first, the manufacturing industries of the com- 
munity where skill in operation is required and which 
are likely to furnish employment for the boys upon their 



58 MANUAL ARTS FOR VOCATIONAL ENDS. 

leaving school ; and second, to determine the kind of train- 
ing through which the boys will make the greatest pro- 
gress toward skill in the special industry or industries. 

"In case there are no manufacturing industries in the 
community in which the school is located, and it is still 
desired to give training which shall count most largely 
for industrial efficiency within the particular trades or 
skilled industries which are likely to prove most attrac- 
tive to the boys of the community, those trades or indus- 
tries are to be considered. 

"The largest opportunity for reaching the greatest num- 
ber who need training for skill in workmanship and for 
making progress in the development of that skill, lies in 
the modification of the courses of study in the elementary 
and secondary schools, by making provision for a much 
more extended line of manual training work than is now 
offered, open to all, running from the kindergarten 
through the high school. We have in existence the 
organization for carrying on this work. It may be so 
given as to bear a direct and helpful relation to the other 
work of the schools, reinforcing and strengthening that 
work, while that other work may be of the kind which 
is of general value for all pupils irrespective of their 
vocation after leaving school." ° 

We have already made very decided progress in this 
direction in a large number of city school systems. What 
is needed is a better organization of that work v/ith re- 
spect to its value as a preliminary training for efficiency 
in industrial processes. 

^Bulletin of the Stout Schools, Vol. 3, No. 2, June, 1908, pp. 
6, 7, 8, and 9. 



MANUAL ARTS IN GRAMMAR GRADES. 59 

In conclusion, let me suggest these points for your 
careful consideration: 

1. Define for yourself and for your constituency what 
manual training should be and do. 

2. Consider carefully its possibilities for preparing pu- 
pils for industrial work without narrowing their outlook 
on life or shortening their preparation for it. 

3. Regard manual training as a means of expression 
which shall have as a motor development subject in the 
curriculum both cultural and utilitarian value. 

4. Select material for work which is easily available 
and which has a local significance, or which is of gen- 
eral use in the trades. 

5. Use material in a well developed sequential plan 
of work running through consecutive grades. Make the 
projects progressive and of practical value for each grade, 
taxing to some extent the ability of the average student 
in the class. 

6. Regard equipment expense as small and mainten- 
ance expense as almost negligible if pupils are allowed 
to pay for the material which is used in articles they make 
and which belong to them. 

7. Be sure to introduce the work slowly and in ac- 
cordance with the maxim, "What is worth doing at all 
is worth doing well." 



CHAPTER V 

The Organization and Teaching of the Manual 
Arts in the High School. 

In the last chapter the statement was ventured that 
the vocational manual arts in the upper grammar grades 
might be the means of revealing to some pupils the ne- 
cessity for continued school work to more fully prepare 
them for their life work. There will be some, doubtless, 
who will reach the high school principally as a result of 
the incentive for further preparation offered by the man- 
ual arts and other subjects taught in the grades. If given 
a life activity bearing, they will serve as an impetus for 
further intellectual work. There will be those too, who 
enter high school as a natural and regular step in a pre- 
scribed course of study. 

Hence in the high school, as in the grammar grades, 
there are found children who are seeking information for 
immediate economic ends, and those also who aspire to 
become college and university students. The problem, 
then, of educating in the public high school those who may 
be found there is not much different in its inherent ele- 
ments than the problem which was discussed in the last 
chapter and which concerned two general classes of 
students comparable to the two classes in the high school. 

In the methods to be follov/ed and in the ends to be 
sought, the problem is somewhat different. To begin 

60 



MANUAL ARTS IN THE HIGH SCHOOL. 61 

with we must give consideration to two important facts, 
viz: 

First: The great majority of those who complete a 
high school course of study immediately thereafter enter 
upon the work of some wage earning position. 

Second : Few if any of those who enter high school 
know at the time of entrance what their future work is 
to be. 

The high school course of study must be constructed 
upon such broad lines that it will serve as a means of 
determining for each boy and girl what he or she can 
best afford to do as a life work, and it must also be 
designed to place at the command of those who are di- 
recting the great commercial and industrial interests of 
the world, individuals prepared for immediate active ser- 
vice in some life occupation. What then is the natural 
conclusion to be reached regarding the education of the 
high school boy and girl? It would seem there can be 
but one answer, viz: give each individual the broadest 
possible education in the high school to fit him for the 
largest possible service in the communit}'^ in which he is 
to live. To do this we must work on the theory that 
few if any high school boys, in at least the early high 
school period, are capable of determining what their call- 
ing in life will be. Assuming this to be true the logical 
thing to do in outlining high school courses of study is 
to place in every course as many of the liberal or non- 
vocational studies as possible together with those which 
may be classed as vocational. This plan operates to afford 
for each individual student the means of selecting, be- 
fore he reaches his senior high school year, his chosen 
profession or vocation. If the selection is that of a 



62 MANUAL ARTS FOR VOCATIONAL ENDS. 

profession, then the student plans to continue in school 
after he leaves the high school. If the selection, on the 
other hand, is that of a vocation, the student will plan, 
probably, to take up his life work immediately upon the 
completion of his high school course. In either case, 
the course of study for the first two or three years is 
such that, whatever his selection may be, he will be per- 
mitted to continue work without serious loss of time. 
In general, high schools now provide for the boy who 
will continue in college, where he may elect a course 
leading to one of the professions. It is not generally 
true, however, that the average high school provides so 
well for the boy who selects a vocation. 

If there is any particular place in the school process 
where pupils should be able to discover themselves, it 
is in the high school. As a rule, the individual is old 
enough upon leaving the high school to know what his 
real desire is concerning a future occupation. He has 
determined definitely on many occasions, perhaps, just 
what his future must be, as did Richard in Dickens' 
Bleak House, only to change his mind within a fortnight. 
The high school work, therefore, should be general in its 
scope and yet so definite in its character as regards any 
particular course, that the average boy finds himself 
before he finishes his junior high school year, if possible. 
His senior high school year should be used particularly 
to fit him either for active life-work or college work. 

No class of school teachers has a broader field in which 
to work than those who teach the manual arts and none 
has more vital problems to solve. In the old academic 
studies conditions have become somewhat settled and 
methods at least partially fixed. Not so with the manual 



MANUAL ARTS IN THE HIGH SCHOOL. 63 

arts. The problems presented in the teaching of these 
subjects are more numerous and more varied than they 
ever were. However, they are not as difficult, perhaps, 
as many which have already been solved by the pioneers in 
those lines of school work which are generally classed un- 
der the head of motor training. Thanks to such men as 
President Runkle, Dr. Belfield, Dean Woodward and 
President Harvey, the work of the missionary in manual 
training is finished for the most part. The younger gene- 
ration, of which we are a part, are not so much concerned 
with the question of the introduction of manual training 
as with the question of what kind of manual training shall 
be maintained. 

Manual training as it is taught at present is subject 
to criticism because of its character. This condition, of 
course, is the result, in part, at least, of the employment 
of teachers who are unprepared for the work in hand. 
This is not the principal reason, however, for chaotic 
conditions. Manual training at present is in a formative 
period of development. It is transitional both as regards 
subject matter and teaching method. No one can say, 
with any reasonable degree of certainty, just what should 
constitute a course of study in any manual training me- 
dium. To a greater or less degree we are all experiment- 
ing and none of us who are mindful of the rapidly 
changing conditions are failing to be keen observers of 
different plans which are being tried out in different 
communities by those who are courageous enough to take 
a step forward, even though it be in the dark. 

The ideas advanced by Dean Russell of Teachers 
College, Columbia University, on the subject of industrial 
education; the co-operative plan of education, which 



64 MANUAL ARTS FOR VOCATIONAL ENDS. 

places a boy in a factory one week and in school the next ; 
the theory that trade education should be introduced as 
early as the sixth or seventh grade in the school process ; 
the plan to make all projects in manual training courses 
meet the social needs and intensify the play of students; 
— all these and other experiments which are being tried 
as a means of satisfying the demand for a change in man- 
ual training are commanding our most careful attention. 
It is because there is such a divergence of opinion regard- 
ing the content of manual training that it is subject to 
criticism regarding its character. Likewise it is one rea- 
son why the rapid introduction of manual training is 
fraught with danger. And yet, one would not have 
present conditions different because it is only by experi- 
ment and by constantly keeping in touch with public 
opinion that we may hope to progress and make the most 
of our opportunities. 

Now it is my purpose to show how manual training 
may be made more completely to serve as a preparation 
for the industries. I shall do this largely by making com- 
parisons and by giving a personal estimate of values. 
First of all, let us consider for a moment the development 
of manual training in this country. I make the following 
brief review in order that we may have a common under- 
standing of the significance of the present demand for 
industrial education. 

In 1865 John Boynton of Templeton, Massachusetts, 
gave $100,000 to establish a free institute in Worcester, 
Massachusetts. During the next year, Ichabod Wash- 
burn, of Worcester, Massachusetts, established shops in 
the institution, to be used by the students in conjunction 
with skilled workmen to produce a commercial product. 



MANUAL ARTS IN THE HIGH SCHOOL. 65 

Milton P. Higgins, who, for a number of years prior to 
his death, was superintendent of the Washburn Shops, 
used these shops, in papers read before many assem.blies, 
as an illustration of what he considered the best plan 
to promote industrial education. 

During the year 1868, Victor Delia Voss introduced 
into the Imperial Technical School of Moscow, Russia, 
class instruction in the use of tools. It was after the 
plan of this Russian school that many of the early 
courses in manual training in this country were patterned. 
In 1876, at the Philadelphia exposition, the people of the 
United States viewed the results of the Moscow school's 
work, and Dr. Runkle, then president of the Massachu- 
setts Institute of Technology, almost immediately recom- 
mended that a course in tool work be instituted there. 
He saw what Victor Delia Voss probably did not see, 
viz : that there was an educational value in the work aside 
from the value it had in developing skill in tool processes. 
The result of his recommendation was the establishment 
of the school of Mechanic Arts as a part of the Massa- 
chusetts Institute of Technology in 1877. 

Dr. Woodward, in St. Louis, followed the lead of 
Dr. Runkle, and, in connection with the Polytechnic De- 
partment of Washington University, was instrumental in 
organizing the St. Louis Manual Training School which, 
in a way, was a development of a course in shopwork 
started by him in 1872. 

In rapid succession manual training was begun in Bal- 
timore, Chicago, Eau Claire, Toledo, New York City, 
Philadelphia, Omaha, Denver, Boston, St. Paul and other 
large cities. 

Time will not permit of a more extended review. I 



66 MANUAL ARTS FOR VOCATIONAL ENDS. 

wish to point out this fact, viz: — That, as in the case of 
the Chicago Manual Training School, directed for so 
many years by Dr. Belfield, and supported by the Com- 
mercial Club of Chicago, the purpose of all this work was 
to train boys for immediate service in the mechanic arts 
upon their graduation from high school. Then, as now, 
there was a feeling on the part of the general public 
that the public school was not doing its full duty in the 
education of the youth of the land. Boys went out from 
the high schools without any definite preparation for par- 
ticular service. History, therefore, has repeated itself 
and after some twenty-five or thirty years of trial we 
are told that manual training is not fulfilling its mission. 

It has been suggested that every course of study in the 
high school from the very beginning should include both 
vocational and non-vocational subjects. Specializations 
in the early part of one's high school work cannot be 
advocated. It is generally felt that it is our duty to lay 
foundations which are broad and general at this point in 
the high school process. However, with a clear con- 
science, one can advocate an arrangement of a school 
curriculum so that as early as the sixth grade the motor 
element in school work shall have a strong industrial 
significance. Indeed if this is not done we shall con- 
tinue to have the great gulf which now exists between 
the elementary school and the high school and in which 
so many lose themselves forever to school work. 

Concerning the organization of the manual arts in the 
high school Professor Chas. A. Bennett writes as follows: 
"It is not of greatest importance that the high school 
graduate shall know the contents of a certain number 
of books, or have power to do a certain number of specific 



MANUAL ARTS IN THE HIGH SCHOOL. 67 

things, but that he shall have discovered the pathway 
which leads to the field of activity which he is best en- 
dowed by nature to work in is essential. He may not 
have observed the windings or the end of the pathway 
or the breadth of the field, but he should be reasonably 
certain as to the general direction in which it lies, and 
have already turned his face that way. 

"If this is the chief, or even one of the chief, functions 
of secondary education, then it follows that the high 
school must afford a wide range of opportunity through 
a variety of studies and occupations. Indeed,, it must 
insist upon each pupil having a rich and varied course. 
Especially is this true for the first two years or more; 
otherwise, how can a pupil be sure to discover himself? 
How can he discover that he was meant to serve in any 
particular one of the great divisions of human activity 
until he has tried such activity, or, at least, has obtained 
some knowledge of its rudimentary forms? 

"To afford such opportunity as is here suggested, the 
school must have a course of study which is both broad 
and rich, covering not merely language and mathematics, 
but history, science, and industry as well. The course 
must not be dried up in one part and juicy in another, but 
juicy and tempting throughout. 

"One of the chief obstacles in the way of realizing the 
full measure of results from this great function of secon- 
dary education is the establishment of specialized high 
schools in our larger cities. Such action affects not only 
the larger cities themselves, but the sm.aller ones also 
which try to copy after them. When there has been 
established in a given city a Latin high school and an 
English high school and a manual training high school. 



68 MANUAL ARTS FOR VOCATIONAL ENDS. 

the resulting grouping of studies for these several schools 
materially narrows the opportunities of the individual 
pupils in each one of them. Or, if there is no narrowing 
because there was never greater breadth, we observe that, 
whereas formerly, or under other conditions, each indi- 
vidual was given all the opportunities the city afforded, 
now he has only a fraction of them. Unless it can be 
proven that sufficient opportunity to discover aptitude is 
given during the several grades of the elementary schools, 
and that the pupil is developed enough to make intelli- 
gent use of this opportunity — which would be very diffi- 
cult to prove — then the plan of having specialized high 
schools works against the realization of the highest ideals 
in secondary-school work. 

"The question then arises: Is it not possible to orga- 
nize a high school which shall bring together the oppor- 
tunities of all these special schools in a single organic 
whole? When this question shall have been answered 
in the affirmative, and a satisfactory plan for such a school 
outlined, then we shall see more clearly the form and 
framework of a superior type of school. Moreover, this 
school will be as well fitted to the needs of the small 
city as of the large. Then the high school in the small 
city can be, as formerly, the same in kind, though not 
in degree, as the school in the largest city. 

"Now that the great value of manual training has 
come to be recognized in secondary schools, why should 
not all pupils have the benefit of it? Since the manual 
training high school has so fully demonstrated its effi- 
ciency, and in its best form, has come to be a broad, 
general school with emphasis on manual training, why 
should not another step forward be taken by removing 



MANUAL ARTS IN THE HIGH SCHOOL. 69 

that emphasis, or, better by emphasizing each of the par- 
ticular lines of work to the same degree? Then, when 
considered from the point of view of our initial proposi- 
tion, we should have a high school of a higher type than 
is common today. 

"To be more specific with reference to manual training 
and drawing, every township high school should have 
a room equipped for woodworking, one for drawing, and 
another for household arts. Under some conditions, two 
rooms instead of three would be sufficient. The high 
school of a city of from 30,000 to 100,000 inhabitants 
should have a room for woodworking equipped for bench- 
work and wood-turning; another for work in cold metals 
such as filing and fitting, bent iron work, hand-tool turn- 
ing, and sheet-metal work, including metal-spinning; a 
third room, of small size, should be the connecting link 
between manual training and physics, and be supplied 
with a few machine tools, a forge, and tools and apparatus 
for electrical construction and testing. In connection 
with each of these rooms there should be a stock- and 
tool-room and a wash-room. One large room should be 
provided for needlework, dressmaking, and the study of 
textiles, and two for drawing — freehand and mechanical. 
Domestic science should be classed with science and con- 
struction, art and handicraft — in fact, unity in the entire 
school work would yield remarkable results. A high 
school for a large, wealthy city like Chicago, Cleveland 
or Boston should contain, in addition to what has already 
been mentioned, rooms for forging, foundry work, mach- 
ine-tool work ; also extra space for drawing and art work, 
including the household arts, and for household science' — 
in short, about such an equipment as is now found in 



70 MANUAL ARTS FOR VOCATIONAL ENDS. 

the best manual-training high schools. Such a school 
would be of large size, and only a fraction of the students 
would take the maximum amount of work in manual 
training. It would, however, if properly balanced, be 
richer in opportunity than any public high school with 
which I am acquainted. 

"Coming back again to one of the thoughts already 
touched upon, the best results from a high school of this 
type, whether in magnified or miniature form, can be 
obtained only when every pupil is required to do a cer- 
tain minimum of work in each of the fundamental lines 
of effort before he is allowed to choose his course or group 
of studies. In other words, before he is allowed to choose 
definitely his group of studies, he must have taken work 
in English, possibly one foreign language, mathematics, 
science, history, drawing, and manual training. Very 
few options should be allowed during the first two years. 
After the pupil has spent a reasonable length of time 
on each of the fundamental lines of study, he is in a far 
better condition to make an intelligent choice than he 
possibly could have been, had any one of these been 
omitted." ' 

We have thus far treated in a general way the elements 
of the ideal school, and drawn certain conclusions. I wish 
now to speak not so much about the high school giving 
manual training as I do about the manual training de- 
partment in the high school. 

The mere fact that manual training is generally con- 
ceded to have a two-fold object, viz: educational in the 

^ "The Organization of Manual Training in High Schools," 
by Chas. A. Bennett, Manual Training Magazine, Vol. 3, No. 
3, April, 1902, pp. 136-140. 



MANUAL ARTS IN THE HIGH SCHOOL. 71 

broad sense of this term, and industrial in the technical 
sense — has led to a great diversity of opinion concerning 
the nature of manual training courses. Some educators 
contend that all manual training from the kindergarten 
through the high school must be based upon psychological 
and pedagogical principles. This has been the means of 
forming different schools or classes of manual training 
teachers, such as the social-industrial school, the ethical 
culture school, and others, each having as a basis for 
their theories and practice certain laws which have been 
established by the psychologists and students of education. 
Another class of manual training teachers — generally 
those whose early training was in the engineering schools 
or in the industries — holds that manual training, espe- 
cially in the high school, must be preparatory to engin- 
eering and industrial activities. Consequently, it must 
deal jointly with technical and industrial processes, and 
therefore develop skill. 

Regarding the subject of skill let it suffice to say that 
if at any time in the public school work up to the time 
one completes a high school course, skill should be a goal 
in the manual arts teaching, this time is in the latter part 
of the high school course, and especially for those who 
are preparing definitely to enter a vocation. 

Skill may be defined as the facility with which one 
thinks and acts. Skill therefore means efficiency and 
counts in the competition of business or trade. For effi- 
cient workers, therefore, skill is essential. 

As the grammar grades do not aim to prepare efficient 
workers, it is not skill here which is most important but 
technique. The understanding of how to do things and 
the ability to do them well but not with great facility 



72 MANUAL ARTS FOR VOCATIONAL ENDS. 

is the object of the grammar grade work. Speaking 
broadly then we may say that the difference between the 
training for technique and the training for skill is at 
least a difference in the fundamentals of manual training, 
as such, and vocational training, or, more specifically, in- 
dustrial training. 

While it is true that manual training first got its basic 
principles from such great educators as Froebel and Pes- 
talozzi, who studied the education of very young children, 
it is also true that in this country manual training was 
developed by men who were primarily interested in manu- 
facture and the education of mechanical specialists. In 
consequence of this last fact, in the United States it was 
started in the upper high school grades with boys and 
girls just entering into manhood and womanhood. At 
least a degree of skill, therefore, as well as technique was 
one of the first requirements of the manual arts in this 
country. A definite bread-and-butter value, therefore, 
was given to the work of the early American manual 
arts work, with the result that elaborate equipments 
were installed for training in several branches of mechan- 
ical work. The wood-shop, forge-shop, foundry and ma- 
chine-shop very early became the places for manual train- 
ing work. 

Now this shop organization in the manual training 
school soon became the beginning of one of two things: 
First, a training — more or less inadequate to be sure — 
for the trades; or second, a training in the direction of 
engineering education. This latter development came 
when, as students pursued their work in the manual train- 
ing shops and as engineering work in this country assumed 
the dignity of a profession, there dawned upon the school 



MANUAL ARTS IN THE HIGH SCHOOL. 73 

authorities the possibilities of manual training as a pre- 
liminary step toward the industries or engineering. 

Today, then, we have three distinct types of high school 
departments of manual arts in America. 

a. The manual training school which bases its course 
upon educational theory as developed in schools of edu- 
cation in such departments as those of psychology and 
child study. These schools produce teachers and phi- 
losophers rather than mechanics and engineers. 

h. The manual training school which is located in a 
commercial or industrial center and is governed by a 
body made up largely of men from the industrial world. 
Schools of this type have for many years turned out men, 
a large percentage of whom have gone into manufactur- 
ing establishments, but who have been rather poorly pre- 
pared either as mechanics or men who become efficient 
foremen and superintendents. 

c The manual training school which has the same 
relation to the engineering college as the academy has to 
the college of liberal arts. These schools have given to 
their graduates a desire some day to do a high grade of 
investigational or experimental work in applied science, 
and so they have found a place in colleges of science and 
colleges of engineering. 

In manual training shop courses in schools under 
heading a, those based on educational theory, one finds 
work being done which has a distinct theoretical basis. 
The course of study is based upon an outline which in 
many cases has been furnished by the school's department 
of education. Particular attention, therefore, is paid to 
the working out of educational theory in the development 
of motor activities. The subject of interest to the pupil 



74 MANUAL ARTS FOR VOCATIONAL ENDS. 

is often given first consideration, and in not a few cases a 
misconception of this much-abused word is the result. 
Pupils are allowed to start large projects without much 
if any preparation in tool manipulation. Furthermore, 
the object of this kind of work is neither technical skill 
nor the completion of objects which have a distinct utili- 
tarian, industrial or shop value. Rather, the object seems 
to be the gratification of childish whims. In such courses 
students are liable to find that they have overestimated 
their ability. Before their undertaking has assumed any 
definite proportions, they are discouraged and- the project 
is abandoned. The value of constancy of purpose, which 
always results in the building of character when a prob- 
lem is continued to its completion, is lost, and, too, the 
prime motive of such a course, viz : — the working out of 
the child's own ideas. In fact, nothing seems to have 
been gained in such a process. It is a question if the stu- 
dent has not actually lost because his lack of success has 
developed in him just the reverse of those sterling qualities 
which count for success in men's achievements. 

The shops in such schools are not permeated with the 
spirit of investigation, neither are they commercial in the 
sense that the spirit of industrialism pervades them. They 
are neither laboratories nor shops in the best sense. It 
is possible that the training received in them leads to- 
ward pedagogical research, but it certainly does not lead 
toward commercial or engineering activities. 

Shop courses in manual training schools of type b, 
located in industrial centers, are the ones having most 
prominence at the present day, principally because they 
are the oldest. They started as a result of a feeling on 
the part of some educators and many business men that 



MANUAL ARTS IN THE HIGH SCHOOL. 75 

the ordinary high school course does not give a boy a 
training which will enable him to make a living. Courses 
in these schools are not designed nor are they constructed 
to teach trades; they are planned to teach the funda- 
mentals of trades and to develop more of the human 
faculties than the courses in the ordinary literary or 
classical high school do. As a rule they have accomplished 
their purpose. They do not, however, unless the school 
has truly become a trade school, make tradesmen. The 
result of this deficiency has led to the present wave of 
industrialism in education, which is forcing public opinion 
in favor of the trade and industrial school. 

Shop courses in these schools are based upon established 
educational theory and upon fundamental trade principles. 
They have won, therefore, the commendation of educators 
and manufacturers. The mechanical processes that are 
taught are generally the cause of clear thinking by the 
student and a fair degree of technical skill. They usually 
open the eyes of the student to this extent: he is able on 
the completion of his high school course to determine 
whether or not he is adapted for mechanical pursuits. As 
a result of this decision, most graduates from these 
courses make few serious mistakes in choosing their 
careers. They at least serve as a coarse screen to separate 
boys of mechanical bent from all others. 

Concerning the schools in class c. namely, those which 
prepare directly for the engineering college, nothing need 
be said here except this: they do not do the work of the 
engineering college — even that done by these colleges in 
the freshman year. It is also believed by those best able 
to judge, viz., the manufacturers, that they are doing 
a different line of work than they should to serve best 



76 MANUAL ARTS FOR VOCATIONAL ENDS. 

the manufacturer or the individual who is to begin in- 
dustrial work without further school preparation. The 
deans of engineering colleges will also verify the statement 
that the manual arts work of this class of schools is not 
the most essential preparatory work for entrance to an 
engineering course. Mathematics and English are given 
precedence over manual arts of a special kind, or over an 
abundance of manual arts as a preparation for college of 
engineering work. 

We may be led to believe three things, then : 

First. — The manual arts work of the first two years 
of high school should be both cultural and industrial in 
character and represent as many fundamental mechanical 
activities as possible. It should be taken by all students. 

For those who will leave the high school at the end of 
the first or second year an opportunity for specialization 
should be given. 

Second. — The manual arts of the last two years of 
high school should be specifically industrial in character 
and should be designed to serve particularly the needs of 
those who will enter vocational service on leaving the 
high school. 

Third. — For those students who will enter college the 
manual arts work of the last two years of high school is 
not important. Other subjects in the hio;h school curricu- 
lum are more valuable as a preparation for college work. 

We will consider specifically now the things which the 
high school may do to provide for the industries and dis- 
cover, if possible, if our three findings just enumerated 
are sound. Let us not suppose that the high school has 
not always done much in this direction. It has. How- 
ever, it may do more. I have hinted at a means of in- 



MANUAL ARTS IN THE HIGH SCHOOL. 77 

creased efficiency in the direction of industrial training to 
take place within the school. What does this mean? 
This, that the high school should be organized upon the 
plan of a university where provision is made for a great 
variety of occupations. Expensive! Of course it vv^ill 
be, but not as expensive, I venture to say, as the plan of 
having two or three high schools in a community, only 
one of which takes account of the eighty per cent whom 
someone has classed as the "hewers of wood and the 
drawers of water." And then, too, what is our inter- 
pretation of the word expensive? Do we include cash 
values only in this term? If not, we must substitute for 
"expensive" another word, even at the expense of coining 
one, for certainly from the standpoint of educational 
efficiency, community intelligence and citizenship it would 
be the reverse of expensive. It would increase values in 
each and all of these. 

Dean Eugene Davenport, of the University of Illinois, 
has become recognized as a strong ally of those who are 
tremendously interested in the possibilities of the high 
school. He is an advocate of universal education. As 
his plan is in harmony with my own views on the subject 
in question, I quote him as follows: 

"If we will honestly take into our high schools as we 
have taken into our universities all the major activities 
of our modern life, splitting no hairs as between the 
industrial and the professional, for no man can define the 
difference, so imperceptibly do they shade the one into the 
other — if we will take them all into the high school as 
we have already taken them into the universities, and 
carry them along together, the vocational and the non- 
vocational, side by side, day after day, from first to last. 



78 MANUAL ARTS FOR VOCATIONAL ENDS. 

so the boy is never free from either, then will our edu- 
cational necessities be met and we shall have gained a 
goodly number of substantial achievements." ^ 

Also as follows: "The best results will always follow 
when as many subjects as possible and as many vocations 
as may be are taught together in the same school, under 
the same management and to the same body of men." 

Again I refer to the university and large colleges, for 
it is in them that I find the illustration I want to express 
my views. These institutions provide an equipment for 
a diversity of interests, but it is maintained for the few 
who are using it for specialization. Suppose now we con- 
sider corresponding facilities for the people's college — the 
public high school — where many are cared for and where 
one gets a general rather than a specialized education. 

Let us organize our high schools on much the same 
basis as they are at present organized, except that instead 
of considering the four years as a preparation for some 
further work, we make the preparatory period run through 
the first two or three years only. Or if we find it im- 
possible for a boy to remain in the high school longer 
than one or two years, let us make it possible for him to 
get in that time the work which will help him most in 
the vocation he will enter. During these years in the 
manual training and drawing departments we will give 
the several subjects as broad an educational value as 
possible, but at the same time have them so thoroughly 
industrialized that they will represent precisely the exist- 
ing industrial conditions. By so doing pupils will be- 

^ "Industrial Education a Phase of The Problem of Universal 
Education," by Eugene Davenport, Manual Training Magazine, 
Vol. 11, No. 2, December, 1909, p. 144. 



MANUAL ARTS IN THE HIGH SCHOOL. 79 

come acquainted with actual conditions and appreciate 
in a measure what their future work will be should they 
select as their chosen field any one represented by the 
school courses. 

Now, in the fourth year, we will in a sense segregate 
those who will continue school work in colleges from 
those who will immediately enter the industries upon 
their completion of the high school course. 

To this latter section in the senior year we will give a 
special course in the vocation to be followed in life. If 
it is pattern-making, we will allow the boy to major, as 
we say in the university, in this subject. If the textile 
industry is his selection, let us be sure that the high school 
offers facilities in this field comparable with those of the 
industry. But in addition to the special line of work 
chosen we will give the pupil the advantage of the 
English, mathematics, history and science which will help 
him most in his future competition with others who are 
also textile industry workers, but who have not had the 
advantage of the liberalizing influence of the school. 

A quotation from Dr. L. D. Harvey, president of Stout 
Institute, Menomonie, Wisconsin, will be appropriate 
here : 

"I believe it possible with a course in manual training 
thus organized ( Note : Reference is made to an organiza- 
tion similar to the one herein outlined) and running 
through the elementary and into the secondary school, to 
plan for special training during the last two years of the 
high school course for the development of skill in the 
processes essential in a particular trade, and thus without 
taking more time for the work than would be given to the 
manual training work proper, if the course were extended 

6 



80 MANUAL ARTS FOR VOCATIONAL ENDS. 

through these two years instead of substituting the trade 
instruction for it. 

"It is a beautiful saying, that the purpose of education 
is to make a life, rather than to make a living. But on 
this mundane sphere where people have to eat, and be 
clothed, and provided with shelter, the first element in 
the making of a life is making a living. One may make 
a living without living a worthy life; one may make a 
living and live a worthy life ; one cannot live a worthy 
life without a living. Most men in the natural order of 
things are responsible not only for their own living, but 
for the making of a living for others in order that they 
may make the most of themselves. 

"From the standpoint of the state, the necessity for 
good citizenship is the fundamental argument for the 
establishment of a public school system. Since the making 
of a living is the first essential in the making of a worthy 
life and the first requisite for service to society, it follows 
that the fundamental argument for an education from the 
standpoint of society and the individual is the 'bread-and- 
butter' argument. In other words, society and the in- 
dividual demand that in the organization of the public 
school system the first aim shall be to provide such a 
variety of schools, such courses of study, with such equip- 
ment, and such teaching force as shall furnish that initial 
preparation necessary for the earning of a living." ' 

It is possible that we shall be agreed upon the general 
content of this thesis, but those of us who are school 
administrative officers will possibly criticize it on the 

'Bulletin of The Stout Training Schools, Vol. 3, No. 2, 
June, 1908, pp. 4 and 10. 



MANUAL ARTS IN THE HIGH SCHOOL. 81 

ground of its being impossible from the standpoint of 
administration. For such I suggest this as a solution: 

Permit the high school to cooperate with the manu- 
factories and industrial establishments of the community, 
the school to continue to be the adjudicator of the 
academic work, and the factory to supply the industrial 
conditions and adjust itself somewhat to the conditions 
of those of school age. This plan for adults is already 
in operation in the University of Cincinnati. For public 
school children a somewhat similar plan is being tried in 
the East at Fitchburg, and Beverley, Massachusetts, and 
other cities. Nearer home, we have at Freeport and 
Moline, Illinois, school and factory cooperation which 
promises to be successful. Time alone can give us an 
opportunity of deciding whether those in charge are on 
the right road. Whatever may be the outcome of plans 
of this kind I cannot feel that they will meet with the 
same success as the one offered in my first suggested plan. 
You will say, however, that the university organization in 
the high school is only applicable if at all to the large 
cities. If this is true, then I suggest this modification — 
one, by the way, which is now operative in certain small 
high schools in Wisconsin : 

Organize within the small high school manual training 
and industrial work which shall be guided by some large 
center — a normal school, a large high school, or, the 
university. Let the director in this center cooperate both 
with the local school board and with the industries of the 
community in determining the kind of work to be intro- 
duced. Select some individual who will be competent to 
teach the course outlined and give him a circuit in which 
he will have a sufficient number of schools to occupy his 



82 MANUAL ARTS FOR VOCATIONAL ENDS. 

time. It seems to me that this plan would be much more 
feasible than the one which necessitates the manual arts 
work of the pupil to be done in a factory, because it pro- 
vides for a more general supervision and a control by 
several interests instead of one ; also, because the instructor 
would, in all probability, be selected partially because of 
his knowledge of school conditions, whereas the factory 
instruction is likely to be given by a factory operative or 
an individual who will be unable to see the large problem 
and coordinate the work of the shop with that of the 
school. 

However this may be, one feature of any of the three 
plans suggested should be emphasized as imperative, viz: 
Put the special work followed by the pupil under the 
supervision of the leaders in the industry represented. 
I do not believe we shall ever get industrial conditions 
to obtain in the school if we allow schoolmen to organ- 
ize the work of industrial courses, unless they have had 
the special industrial training needed. On the other 
hand, I maintain that the executive heads in the school 
system must remain in general control. Germany and 
England give us our best illustrations of combined school 
and community management in which there is co-operation 
between the school authorities and the industrial leaders. 

There is at least one other cooperation between the 
school and the world outside of the school which needs 
emphasis. Important as the cooperation between the 
school and the industries is, of no less importance is the 
co-operation between the school and the farm. From the 
vocational point of view, if there could be the same op- 
portunity for initiative on the part of the boy and girl 
in the congested communities that there is for the boy 



MANUAL ARTS IN THE HIGH SCHOOL. 83 

on the farm, and that there was formerly for all boys 
and girls, we might not need the manual arts in the 
city. It is to supply, in a way, the independent activity 
of the boy on the farm that manual training is put into 
the city school. Especially at this time when agriculture 
is becoming such an important vocational subject in the 
high school, an effort should be made to use the manual 
and domestic arts to supplement and to extend the work 
of agriculture. There is no better field from which 
the manual arts teacher may select projects for con- 
struction than that of the home and particularly the 
home on the farm. The prospective teacher of agri- 
culture or the teacher of manual arts might well prepare 
himself to teach the other of these two subjects. 

I have just one more suggestion to make in conclusion, 
viz: 

Whatever means we take to make our high school 
manual training more nearly prepare for the industries let 
us be sure that in season and out of season and all the 
time we introduce into our work design which shall 
eventually make our industrial products compare favor- 
ably from an artistic point of view with those of foreign 
producers. What a great humiliation it is that we, the 
American people, leaders in so many lines, are so de- 
ficient in industrial aesthetics. The designers in American 
industries are not trained in America; indeed they are 
not, as a rule, Americans. What a wonderful change 
can be made in this condition in the next decade if we 
will lay emphasis upon good design in all our work. I 
believe there is even greater need for study of design on 
the part of manual arts teachers than for a more intimate 
knowledge of industrial processes. 



84 MANUAL ARTS FOR VOCATIONAL ENDS. 

In conclusion, now, I wish to quote the father of manual 
training in this country. Dr. C. M. Woodward, formerly 
principal of the St. Louis Manual Training School, and 
dean of the Engineering College of Washington Uni- 
versity, where he suggests the lines of work to be carried 
on in a high school department of manual arts. 

Dr. Woodward writes: "The shops I recommend are 
woodworking shops in which ordinary bench tools are 
used, where a variety of hard and soft lumber is wrought 
upon, and where the fundamental principles of workman- 
ship are taught; secondly, a wood-turning shop, which is 
always a pattern-shop, where opportunities for learning 
the complete alphabet of steps in wood-turning are pro- 
vided ; thirdly, the first metal shop, in which metals are 
heated and thereby made ductile and pliable. 

"The fundamental processes of a forging shop are very 
few in number, altho their applications are countless; but 
these fundamental processes must be learned step by step, 
studying all the while the degree and influence of heat, 
and the behavior of iron and steel when heated, and 
heated to different degrees. There is so much in a forg- 
ing exercise for the learner to master that it is better to 
divide it, the first step being a question of form and of 
manipulation ; the second, a question of heat and the 
flow of metal under the hammer. The first can be 
learned with an extremely ductile metal like lead ; the 
second, with hot iron and then with hot steel. 

"The fourth shop is the molding and casting shop, 
where the use of patterns is fully illustrated and the 
methods of making molds are mastered so far as the 
elements go. The process of molding and casting deter- 
mines many of the details of patterns, and the pupil 



MANUAL ARTS IN THE HIGH SCHOOL. 85 

learns how patterns must be divided; what cores are for, 
and how they are made; and what core-prints are, and 
how they are used. 

"The most expensive shop of all is the fifth, in which 
the use of tools for cutting and fitting the harder metals 
without the assistance of heat is learned. This is ordi- 
narily known as the 'machine shop,' inasmuch as the tools 
are largely machine tools of considerable complexity, altho 
there is always a certain proportion of bench work con- 
nected with all machine work. It is in this shop that we 
find the most elaborate, the highly scientific, appliances, 
and it is a fine educational achievement for the pupil to 
master the separate tools, to learn their uses and their 
requirements. The whole theory of metal-chipping, filing, 
drilling, planing, and turning is new to him, and intensely 
interesting. Accordingly, the shop should be equipped 
with certain standard tools for the processes I have named. 
The lathes, drills, and planers need not be large, but they 
should be ample for such exercises as are found useful 
in the course of instruction. As the pupil's mastery grows, 
he sees more quickly the logic of a machine, and he thinks 
over again the thoughts of the designer or inventor, and 
appreciates, as he never appreciated before, the high 
qualities of the skilled expert. 

"The machine shop, like all other shops, should be 
fitted for regular sections of students numbering not over 
twenty-four, nor should it accommodate less than twenty. 

"I have not time to dwell upon the importance of 
mechanical drawing, which from the beginning to the end 
should accompany shopwork. The drawing easily outruns 
the shops. It goes into fields too difficult and too com- 
plicated for the shop teacher to follow, but it should be 



86 MANUAL ARTS FOR VOCATIONAL ENDS. 

thoro and thoroly intelligible at every step; not for art 
work merely, nor for the crafts, but for both, and for 
the culture of the geometric imagination. So long as 
drawing is based upon principles which can be clearly 
stated and understood, it is within the reach of every 
rational pupil." * 

It probably is true that Dr. Woodward's list of shops 
and shop processes to be included in the manual arts of 
the high school is not complete enough for those who 
would make the public high school meet as fully as pos- 
sible the industrial needs of the present. It certainly is 
true, however, that those enumerated by him are among 
those for which provision should first be made. Others 
may be added or substituted depending upon the local 
demands of the community. 

Allow me just a closing word in summarizing the four 
most important points which I have endeavored to make 
in this chapter: 

First. — An intermediate school to provide for those in 
the seventh and eighth grades who now take advantage 
of their first opportunity to leave school — the time when 
the State ceases to compel them to attend school, should 
be established. 

Second. — Organize one or more general high schools 
in a community instead of two or three special high 
schools. In this school during the first three years compel 
all pupils to take at least a minimum amount of manual 
work which is both good manual training and good in- 
dustrial work. Also provide for specialization along in- 
dustrial lines, especially, in the fourth year. 

* Addresses and Proceedings of the National Educational 
Association, 1905, pp. 266-270. 



MANUAL ARTS IN THE HIGH SCHOOL. 87 

Third. — In case the general high school organization is 
not feasible or possible, provide for specialization in in- 
dustrial work by a school-factory cooperation or by the 
circuit instructional method wherein supervision will be 
obtained from recognized authorities representing both 
the school and industrial interests, and provision for 
maintenance will be made through an educational ex- 
tension department. 

Fourth. — Inject into all drawing and shopwork a large 
amount of sane design. 



CHAPTER VI. 

The Teacher and the Supervisor of Manual Arts. 

The discussion upon the qualifications of the teacher 
and the supervisor of manual arts has been reserved for 
the last chapter because of all that has been said in this 
book, it should be the most important part, and conse- 
quently may be considered as the climax of the vv^hole. 

Past experience has shown that where the manual arts 
have been continued in a community they have oftentimes 
been poorly taught. When an analysis of failures has 
been made it may be safe to say that in most cases they 
have been due largely if not wholly to inefficient teaching. 
Perhaps not a larger number of failures have occurred in 
the conduct of manual arts work than in work carried on 
in other branches of school during a similar period of 
development. It is to be expected that in the experi- 
mental stage in the teaching of any subject mistakes will 
be made which will result in criticism, if not in the 
abandonment of the subject for a time. Notwithstanding 
this fact, however, it would seem that now after nearly 
thirty years of manual arts in this country, and when the 
subject is so well established and so generally taught, 
there should be few, if any, attempts to organize and 
teach the subject without ultimate success. 

And yet there are at least two very well defined reasons 
why we may expect quite as much criticism of manual arts 

8S 



THE TEACHER AND THE SUPERVISOR. 89 

teaching within the next few years as has been made 
during any similar length of time in the past, unless we 
recognize present limitations and future needs. Naturally 
enough one need is an understanding of the very rapidly 
changing conditions which have been set forth in this 
volume and which it attempts to explain in such a way 
that adjustments may be made to guard against failures 
or even partial failures in the future. A second reason 
is the great dearth of teachers who are qualified to con- 
duct properly manual arts classes, to say nothing of the 
manual arts department where several subjects in the 
manual arts are taught. 

It may be advantageous to have before us some of the 
reasons for past failures before we consider the qualifica- 
tions of the teacher and the supervisor. Two very 
striking deficiencies in the average manual arts teacher 
are apparent to one who has visited schools and who has 
an acquaintance with many who are responsible for the 
teaching or the supervision of the manual arts. 

First, I would say that a very limited preparation either 
for the general work of a teacher or for his specific work 
has been the cause of many disappointments of boards of 
education in the work accomplished by the ones who were 
employed as proficient manual arts teachers. The demand 
for manual training has been so great that men and 
women have been drafted into service who have had only 
a very meagre preparation for their work. In the grades, 
especially in the primary school period, the regular 
teachers have been expected to teach manual training 
without any preparation whatsoever for the work. They 
have been dependent upon supervisors' outlines and a very 
few supervisors' meetings to give them any ability to 



90 MANUAL ARTS FOR VOCATIONAL ENDS. 

either handle the materials used or to comprehend the 
scope of manual training. In the grammar grades the 
same thing has been true except in a comparatively few 
cases during the past few years when special teachers 
have been employed. These, as a rule, until very recent 
years have had little or no training in the manual arts, 
and almost never any training in the teaching of the 
manual arts. 

In the high school it is easy to trace developments. 
The first teachers here were either mechanics or graduates 
of schools of technology. Both proved inefficient because 
they could not teach the subject which they presumably 
knew well. They were individuals, too, who had almost 
no appreciation of design and no ability as designers. 
Next came the normal art school graduate who directed 
work in the art crafts; or the graduate of a school in 
which the work in a department of education had been 
the individual's major, because of which fact it was 
supposed he would be a good teacher. Such preparations 
were found to be inadequate for the field of manual arts 
teaching. 

Finally, after the manual training high schools and 
normal schools were established, their graduates were 
drawn upon to occupy this field. The large majority of 
the present manual arts teachers are those who have re- 
ceived their complete school training in such institutions. 

The present success of the manual arts is largely due 
to the teaching which has been done by men and women 
of this class. Whether this success has been great or 
small it is certainly true that in the past a teacher's short- 
comings have been due to a very limited academic train- 
ing. This class of teachers has found it difficult to cope 



THE TEACHER AND THE SUPERVISOR. 91 

with their colleagues in matters of general education 
because of a narrow point of view. Herein is to be 
found one of the needs of the future. It is not enough 
for the teacher to be proficient in his own field ; he must 
also have a sufficient training in the several branches of 
educational work to be capable of commanding the respect 
of his colleagues and his pupils. Unless he can perform 
well and with considerable skill the operation in which 
he expects high standards of his class, he cannot hope for 
their confidence nor will he get it. Not infrequently 
teachers have been found incompetent as technicians. It 
is difficult to find a teacher who can teach well more 
than two or three of the manual arts subjects. Never- 
theless, one is often expected to handle all the subjects 
in a department where mechanical drawing, woodwork 
and metal work are taught. One argument for the 
tradesman-teacher in our high schools is his technique and 
skill. 

A third cause for past difficulties is closely related to 
that of poor preparation. It is the course of study which 
has been followed blindly. Without an understanding 
of child life and its significance in school work; with 
scarcely any knowledge of conditions aside from those 
affecting the handling of materials, it is little wonder 
that the term "course of study" has been a misnomer in 
the manual arts work. As was explained in a previous 
chapter the so-called courses have ranged between those 
which are characterized by their extreme formalism, and 
those which are the expression of the whims of children. 

A fourth element in some of the unsuccessful teaching 
of the past has been an over-equipment or, at least, one 
which would be regarded as extraordinary by one who 



92 MANUAL ARTS FOR VOCATIONAL ENDS. 

really knew how to meet conditions. Communities have 
therefore lost confidence in the manual arts teacher who 
thus failed in an important part of his work. 

The time given to manual arts also has been so small, 
especially in the high school, that nothing more than 
amateurish results, from the stand point of journeyman 
labor, were possible. It is this standard which the 
average citizen has used in judging the results of the 
manual arts. If in any appreciable way we are to em- 
phasize subject matter, and secure results which will 
make it possible for boys and girls to do a vocational 
work when they leave school, more time must be de- 
manded in that part of the course where skill rather than 
technique is necessary, or the manual arts rather than 
manual training receives the emphasis. 

It must be apparent from the five reasons above given 
for some of the mistakes of the past, that we cannot ex- 
pect in our public schools to comply with the demands 
for vocational education unless more attention is given by 
the prospective manual arts teacher to his preparation for 
teaching. This must involve both a broad education and 
a specific training in the particular shopwork or drawing 
which he is to teach. Fortunately schools for the train- 
ing of manual arts teachers have been established and men 
who employ teachers are demanding of them both general 
education and particular professional training. With an 
understanding of the needs, it is hoped that the demands 
will be met. 

In the minds of many it is a question whether any 
school can supply the shop conditions of a commercial 
shop. It is under commercial shop conditions that 
one should be trained who expects to teach in the in- 



THE TEACHER AND THE SUPERVISOR. 93 

dustrial education field. While it is true that the 
teacher of industrial work should be trained as an in- 
dustrial worker, and probably true that the public school 
manual arts teacher should have had some industrial ex- 
perience, it is likewise true that both of these teachers 
must be trained in the art of teaching. We do need 
practical shopmen and draftsmen in our schools, but we 
need, quite as much, the man of broad academic training, 
and the one who can teach what he knows. 

The first training, however, secured as a result of a 
good college course with emphasis on the elements of 
teaching and with special practice in the technical work 
to be taught must be considered as only a beginning, for 
the real teacher is always a student. As has been sug- 
gested, to be a master of the processes of preparing, 
shaping, fastening and finishing the materials with which 
the teacher is to deal in his classes is not enough. It is 
to be assumed also that the manual arts teacher in any 
grade of work is cooperating with the other teachers in 
the educational process to keep the content of a pupil's 
work well defined and to permit all teachers to assist in 
securing certain general school standards. The shop 
teacher and the drawing teacher each has an opportunity, 
which he cannot afford to lose, to aid in securing clear- 
cut descriptive work in English, and, by concrete illus- 
tration, to make mathematics understood. 

There are four fields of study which should be of 
constant interest to the manual arts teacher. They are 
psychology, education, sociology and technology or in- 
dustry. 

By means of correspondence with other teachers, 
through the medium of the best literature, and as a result 



94 MANUAL ARTS FOR VOCATIONAL ENDS. 

of connection with associations he will supplement his 
first knowledge and verify his daily classroom experience 
in the work of a student- teacher. This means continued 
study which acts and reacts upon one; first, as an in- 
dividual associated with those of immature mind; and 
second, as one who keeps abreast of the times by keeping 
in close touch with the work of the world. 

It is not necessary that one should be a specialist in 
the several branches above mentioned, but he must be 
familiar with the fundamentals in each and with that 
portion of each which he may use. Hence, in psychology 
it is the scientific basis of thought and action ; in sociology, 
the materials of social inquiry, and their economic and in- 
dustrial uses; in education, the theory determining the 
scope of manual training; and in engineering and in- 
dustry, the usable engineering theory regarding the prin- 
ciples of construction in each branch that is needed. The 
particular study and practice by which the manual arts 
teacher should continue to make advances will be found 
in the fields of education and industry. 

To still further emphasize what has been said about 
the manual training teacher, may I give a brief statement 
of the qualities which Henry Turner Bailey, once super- 
visor of drawing in the state of Massachusetts, now editor 
of the School Arts Book, says are of unquestionable im- 
portance as qualifications of the manual arts teacher? 

At the top of the list he places the following personal 
elements: A charm of manner, a personal magnetism. 
To these we might add "a saint-like smile," to use the 
words of the great Uno Cygnaus. He must be optimistic, 
sympathetic, and have an objective as well as a subjective 
view. 



THE TEACHER AND THE SUPERVISOR. 95 

Next in order Mr. Bailey places as a qualification, ex- 
ecutive ability, control and insight. Someone has said, 
"the teacher of the manual arts must have many details 
in mind but he must reduce them to order and get pupils 
to take responsibility. He must have a policy planned 
and kept in mind which will result in pupils taking the 
initiative. Like the supervisor who seeks to direct him, 
he must have tact and geniality with his pupils, which 
will serve him as lubricants for official machinery warm 
(sometimes hot) with the friction of misunderstanding. 
Above all things he must have common sense." 

Concerning the education of the manual training 
teacher Mr. Bailey says he must have a general culture 
based upon both scholastic and technical instruction and 
experience. The school to him must be a research field, 
and he must see in it a place where the child reacts upon 
an immediate environment — where the child lives, not 
prepares to live. 

Another very important factor in the organization and 
maintenance of manual training is the supervisor. There 
was a time when he was unknown, but now even in the 
smaller towns and surely in the cities he is indispensable, 
provided he is the right man in the place. Manual train- 
ing today has arrived at the stage where it needs stand- 
ardizing. No one can help in this process as well as the 
supervisor. We need, besides the town or city supervisor, 
a state supervisor or inspector. It will not be many years 
before he will appear upon the scene. If we look to our 
mother country, England, we find what state-wide in- 
spection means — in general, to learn lessons in organiza- 
tion which, in turn, mean higher efficiency and economy. 

The good supervisor must first of all be a good teacher. 

7 



96 MANUAL ARTS FOR VOCATIONAL ENDS. 

Not all good teachers, however, will make good super- 
visors. Besides being a good teacher, he must be sym- 
pathetic, both as a student and as a business man. He 
must be an organizer. Perhaps the power to get all parts 
of a great system to work in harmony, and each part to 
have a particular duty for which some one individual will 
be responsible is the large work of the supervisor. Cer- 
tainly this function is one which requires the greatest 
tact and diplomacy. He must be a man of purpose and 
determination, but very often he must secure results by 
taking steps and making moves with the greatest of care, 
and sometimes he must study his problem from every 
point of view. Not infrequently he will secure what he 
wants only after great delay and an unwise expenditure 
of money. But he can afiford to wait and to allow others 
to take the initiative, even at the expense of immediate 
results, if in the end he "accomplishes things." 

In Stout Institute Bulletin No. 4, for December, 1908, 
page 41, we read in reference to the supervisor: "His 
work divides itself into three stages: first, preliminary 
organization; second, class organization; and third, the 
re-organization period. The preliminary organizing 
should be done either before the close of school or before 
or during vacation. If it is the case of installing a plant, 
this becomes not only the most important part of an or- 
ganizer's work, but the severest test of his ability. In 
fact, many an aspirant for manual training honors has 
lost or won during these preliminary weeks." 

By preliminary organization is meant that planning 
which must be done during the vacation preceding a school 
term, and often the readjustment of these plans at the 
beginning of a term when the actual conditions under 



THE TEACHER AND THE SUPERVISOR. 97 

which plans must operate can be determined. There is 
the outline of courses of study, the planning for teachers 
meetings, the securing of teachers, and the purchase, dis- 
tribution and classification of material which must be at- 
tended to during this period and before actual class work 
begins. 

The class organization work runs through the school 
year, but is most urgent at the beginning of school work. 
It is the plan of work which accommodates the time 
schedules, takes account of classroom conditions, in- 
terprets the strength of teachers and the thousand-and-one 
things which make for a perfect system, where energy 
will not be wasted, but where there will be conservation 
of material, pupils and teachers throughout the year. 

The reorganization work may come at any time but 
usually when some unexpected situation arises making the 
regular plan ineffective. It will always come at the 
beginning of a new term in any year after the first one 
when the preliminary plans and regular classroom plans 
were made. In the work of reorganization the supervisor 
again shows his ability to use tact, for he must often 
change the plans of others dependent upon his own. In 
doing so he must keep in mind both ends of the course 
which he has planned. He must not let trying contingen- 
cies permanently cloud his broad view of the year's work 
as a whole, but he must sacrifice here and expand there 
to the end that the original plan will be carried out with 
as few interruptions as possible. 

The plan referred to must not be a yearly program 
from which one cannot vary. On the other hand it must 
be an outline of desired accomplishments; the result of 
much thought as to the abilities of both pupils and 

7a 



98 MANUAL ARTS FOR VOCATIONAL ENDS. 

teachers, and of the possibilities and limitations due to 
the number involved. The plan must be one which can 
be and will be changed, but which operates more or less 
constantly as does any well designed and well kept 
machine. Like the machine, the plan must be one which 
will accommodate itself quickly to sudden changes. Parts 
will become over-strained and possibly will break; re- 
pairs must therefore be made, and made so quickly that 
the whole may continue to give out a product which will 
pass inspection both as to quality and quantity. 

The plan then must be general in character, and yet 
so well defined, and its results from week to week so well 
recorded that at any time one may determine just what 
must be done next in order that the plan as a whole shall 
continue intact. Not only this but the plan must be 
easily read and followed by anyone, for new teachers 
must take the place of old teachers and such interruptions 
must not afiFect the continuance of operation. 

Of all the elements which contribute to the success 
of such a plan, not the least will be the careful records 
kept by the supervisor, the helpful suggestions which he 
v/ill give as a result of a systematic weekly study of these 
records. True it is then that he must be a most versatile 
individual; the best of teachers, a business man of un- 
questionable ability, and a promoter who, because of his 
ability to handle men and things, knows nothing but that 
which spells success. 

Concerning the supervisor, Dr. James P. Haney, for a 
long time supervisor of drawing and manual training in 
New York City, says: 

"Among the elements which make for successful super- 
vision, the attributes of the supervisor himself must be 



THE TEACHER AND THE SUPERVISOR. 99 

given an important place. He stands as the professional 
adviser of both superintendent and grade teacher, and 
must, in his attitude, reveal his professional pride in his 
calling. He must be a teacher in the broad sense of the 
term, one who leads others to a realization of the ex- 
cellence and worth of the subject he presents; a teacher 
not necessarily demonstrating some lesson, but one acting 
as an animating agent, aiding not only by direct sug- 
gestion, but by general guidance and stimulus to higher 
professional life." ^ 

"The supervisor," says Henry Turner Bailey, "whom 
teachers respect and whose visits they enjoy, the one for 
whom they will work overtime and never tell, the super- 
visor whom the children love and for whose sake they 
will do anything, is one who serves consistently, sym- 
pathetically, abundantly." ^ 

I am sure we may agree with those whom I have 
quoted and with others whose views I have used that 
for the manual training teacher and supervisor the road 
to success is long and sometimes tedious, but with the 
goal at the end — viz., the child and his needs — kept in 
mind, he will always be furnished with an incentive to 
lead him on, not blindly, but with a vision which makes 
both class interests and individual necessities keenly felt 
and met by his associates as well as himself. 

^ "The Supervisor," by James Parton Haney, Year Book; 
Council of Supervisors of The Manual Arts, 1903, p. 15. 

^ "The Supervisor's Chief Business," by Henry Turner 
Bailey, The Applied Arts Book, Vol. 2, No. 2, October, 1902, p. 
34. 



Books on the Manual Arts 

HANDWORK IN WOOD. By William Noyes. 

A handbook for teachers and a textbook for normal 
school and college students. A comprehensive and 
scholarly treatise, covering logging, sawmilling, 
seasoning and measuring, hand tools, wood fasten- 
ings, equipment and care of the shop, the common 
joints, types of wood structures, principles of joinery, 
and wood finishing. 304 illustrations — excellent pen 
drawings by Anna Gausmann Noyes. Price, $2.00. 

WOOD AND FOREST. By William Noyes. 

This book brings into attractive and convenient 
form much information, valuable to the woodworker 
and lumberman, which has not previously been ob- 
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structure of wood, properties of wood, the principal 
species of American woods and concludes with five 
chapters on the forest. It is richly illustrated, 
chapter three alone containing 335 illustrations of 
dl species of wood. Price, $3.00. 

CORRELATED COURSES IN WOODWORK AND MECHAN- 
ICAL DRAWING. By Ira S. Griffith. 

This is designed to meet the every-day need of 
the teacher of woodworking and mechanical drawing 
for reliable information concerning organization of 
courses, subject matter and methods of teaching. It 
covers also classification and arrangement of tool 
operations, shop organization, design, stock bills, 
cost of materials, records, equipment, maintenance, 
etc. It is based on sound pedagogy, thorough tech- 
nical knowledge and successful teaching experience. 
It is practical. $1.50. 



PUBLISHED BY 

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Books on the Manual Arts 

PROJECTS FOR BEGINNING WOODWORK AND MECHAN- 
ICAL DRAWING. By Ira S. Griffith. 
A book of problems for the use of students in the 
grammar grades. These are accompanied by notes 
and working directions. The book contains 32 pages 
of text and SO plates of working drawings. Printed 
on heavy gray paper and bound with brass fasteners. 
Price, 75 cents. 

ADVANCED PROJECTS IN WOODWORK. By Ira S. 

Griffith. 
This book is similar to "Projects for Beginning 
Woodwork and Mechanical Drawing," but is suited 
to high school needs. It contains 50 plates of draw- 
ings of well designed projects — serviceable pieces 
of furniture. Price, $1.00. 

ESSENTIALS OF WOODWORKING. By Ira S. Griffith. 
A textbook written especially for the use of gram- 
mar and high school students. A clear and compre- 
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and processes, to supplement, but not to take the 
place of the instruction given by the teacher. The 
book does not contain a course of models; it may be 
used with any course. It is illustrated with photo- 
graphs and numerous pen drawings by Edwin V. 
Lawrence. Price, $L00. 

PROBLEMS IN FURNITURE MAKING. 

By Fred D. Crawshaw. 
This book consists of 32 plates of working draw- 
ings suitable for use in grammar and high schools, 
and 24 pages of text, including chapters on design, 
construction and finishes, and notes on the problems. 
Price, $1.00. Board covers, 20 cents extra. 

PUBLISHED BY 

The Manual Arts Press, Peoria, Illinois 



Books on the Manual Arts 

PROBLEMS IN WOODWORKING. By M. W. Murray. 
A convenient collection of good problems consist- 
ing of forty plates bound in heavy paper covers with 
brass fasteners. Each plate is a working drawing, 
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covers, 20 cents extra. 

PROBLEMS IN WOOD-TURNING. By Fred D. Crawshaw. 
In the first place this is a book of problems — 25 
plates covering spindle, face-plate, and chuck turn- 
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Price, 80 cents. Board covers, 20 cents extra. 

PROBLEMS IN MECHANICAL DRAWING. By Charles 
A. Bennett. With drawings made by Fred D. 
Crawshaw. 
This book consists of 80 plates and a few ex- 
planatory notes, and is bound in heavy paper covers 
with brass fasteners. Its purpose is to furnish 
teachers of classes beginning mechanical drawing 
with a large number of simple, practical problems. 
These have been selected with reference to the 
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Board covers, 20 cents extra. 

PUBLISHED BY 

The Manual Arts Press, Peoria, Illinois 



Books on the Manual Arts 

WOOD PATTERN-MAKING. By Horace T. Purfield. 
A thoroughly practical and well written textbook 
and shop manual for high school, trade school, tech- 
nical school and college students. $1.25. 
HANDWORK INSTRUCTION FOR BOYS. By Dr. Alwin 
Pabst. Translated by Bertha Reed Coffman. 
A philosophical and historical review of manual 
training for boys and a discussion of the systems 
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BEGINNING WOODWORK. At Home and in School. 
By Clinton S. VanDeusen. 
A full and clear description in detail of the 
fundamental processes of elementary benchwork in 
wood. This description is given through directions 
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either for school or home problems. The book 
contains more than one hundred original sketches 
and ten working drawings by Edwin V. Lawrence. 
Price, $1.00. 

WOODWORK FOR SCHOOLS ON SCIENTIFIC LINES. 

By James Thomas Baily and S. Pollitt. 

The American edition of an English book contain- 
ing 120 practical problems, many of which have been 
designed to correlate mathematics and physical 
science with manual training. Price, 75 cents. 

SELECTED SHOP PROBLEMS. By George A. Seaton. 
A collection of sixteen problems in woodworking 
made to meet the needs of busy teachers of manual 
training. Each problem has been put to the test and 
has proven satisfactory to the teacher who designed 
it and to the pupil who made it. Price, 20 cents. 



PUBLISHED BY 

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lUN 27 19\2 



